Readings Monthly, August 2013

Transcription

AUGust 2013
Free
Morag fraser on alexis Wright / father’S day gift guide
Event
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d ay
maria
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Books
music
film
events
AUGUST n e w
releases
peter
goldsworthy
$29.99
p12
alexis
wright
$29.95
p6
$17.99
p10
RUst and
bone
$39.95
p17
sweet
jean
$19.95
p18
more inside...
Cover illustration by jane reiseger (the jacky winter group)
cassandra
golds
David Hunt uncovers the strange and absurd of Australia’s history in Girt
Warehouse Sale
Loads of books, CDs, DVDs and stationery items
Hurry! Only while stocks last!
Saturday 17 &
Sunday 18 August
314-318 Drummond St Carlton
9am-5pm (between Faraday and Elgin Sts)
CARLTON 309 Lygon St 9347 6633 HAWTHORN 701 Glenferrie Rd 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 Glenferrie Rd 9509 1952
ST KILDA 112 Acland St 9525 3852 READINGS AT THE STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA 328 Swanston St 8664 7540
READINGS AT THE BRAIN CENTRE 30 Royal Parade, Parkville 9347 1749
See shop opening hours, browse and buy online at www.readings.com.au
2
R e a d i n g s M O N T H LY a u g u s t 2 0 1 3
This month’s news
READINGS WAREHOUSE SALE
Bargain hunters! Our annual Readings
warehouse sale is on again from Saturday
GRIFFITH REVIEW 10TH
ANNIVERSARY COMPETITION
Griffith REVIEW recently released its 10th
17 to Sunday 18 August, between 9am and
5pm each day. Tons of books, CDs, DVDs and
stationery will be available at fabulous prices,
so come along to the Readings Warehouse
Anniversary Edition, Griffith REVIEW 41: Now
Mark’s
Say
We Are Ten (Text, PB, $27.99). Customers who
purchase a copy of this edition at any Readings
News and views from Readings’
managing director, Mark Rubbo
shop can enter by attaching their receipt to the
at Ground floor, 314–318 Drummond Street,
competition entry forms provided, along with a
Carlton (tucked between Faraday and Elgin
proposed slogan, of 10 words or less, that can
streets) to browse our stock, while it lasts.
be used to promote Griffith REVIEW. The current
slogan is: ‘Personal, political, (un)predictable.
NATIONAL BOOKSHOP DAY
Australia’s best conversation.’ The winner will
Saturday 10 August is National Bookshop
Griffith REVIEW backlist. Competition closes 4
receive a complete set of all 40 editions of the
Day and this year the Australian Booksellers
Association is calling for people to vote for
October 2013 and the winner will be announced on
11 October 2013 online at griffithreview.com.
their favourite bookshop in Australia (if you
Like me you’ve probably done a number of surveys, wondering what they were for and what happened
to the information gleaned from them. Well, we recently sent out our own survey to the 39 000 people
subscribed to our enews and Readings Monthly and we had an overwhelming 10% response rate –
the company that was helping us prepare this survey said that a good response was usually 2–3%. We
also surveyed a sample of the wider Melbourne population so that we could compare a general book
shopper to the Readings customer. The reason for the survey was that the book industry, like many
media industries, is under a lot of pressure: to be honest, we haven’t been immune – our sales have
been significantly down over the last two years. So, we wanted to uncover what your attitudes were to
love Readings, we’d be delighted if you voted
a range of things, including how you read and bought your books, whether you liked what we did, and
will go into the draw to win $500 worth of
BILL’S ITALIAN FOOD
COMPETITION
Australian Book Vouchers. The winning
With more than 100 original recipes that
We also asked you some personality questions – some people found these intrusive, but others
bookshop will be announced on National
rejoice in fresh, seasonal produce, Bill’s
Bookshop Day. See our events calendar
Italian Food (HarperCollins, HB, was $50,
on page three to find information on the
special price $44.95) is a delightful, delicious
festivities we have planned for the day.
adventure. Purchase the book from any
for one of our stores). The voting period runs
until 5 August and everyone who participates
what we could do to improve.
Readings shop and go in the draw to win
an ultimate Italian Prize Pack, including an
INDIGENOUS LITERACY DAY
espresso coffee machine, Bill’s own brand
Help us celebrate the seventh Indigenous
of ground coffee, a pack of biscotti and two
Literacy Day on Wednesday 4 September.
Readings will donate 5% of our takings from
sales on this day to the Indigenous Literacy
Foundation (ILF), which works to raise literacy
levels and improve the opportunities of
cups. Instore customers will need to complete
an entry form and attach a receipt as proof of
purchase. Competition closes 30 September
2013. Only the winner will be notified.
Indigenous Australians living in remote and
isolated regions. To read more on ILF, please
visit indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au.
found them revelatory! From that, we discovered that only 5% of Readings customers are ‘traditional’
(conservative), compared with 16% of the general population. 80% of you are over 35 and 24% are
between 56 and 65. Most of you work (full-time or part-time), with 34% of you employed in culture, the
arts and academia. 82% of you read books several times a week compared with 37% in the general
population. 74% of you also like to venture out to eat and drink every week, compared with just 47%
of the general population. You like to read reviews and browse: 71% of you said that you come into
the shop with no specific product in mind. You’re tech savvy, with 92% of you buying books online
versus 60% of the general population, and most of you do this for convenience. Though, only 6% of
you are committed ebook readers, which is significantly less than the 28% of you who prefer to download
your music. You support Australian writers, with 69% of you buying Australian fiction compared to 24% of
the general population. In music you like classical, jazz, alternative and folk. A significant number are now
buying LPs – 7.71% compared with 2.4% of the general population. You’re also much more likely to buy
books as gifts. You’re not all as loyal as you used to be: in a 2005 survey, 73% said they bought more than
half their books at Readings compared with only 46% now. In spite of this, when you do visit Readings, you
WIN 100 BEST ALBUMS OF
ALL TIME
like the unique and specialised product range. 98% said you were satisfied with the experience you’d had
in store, and that Readings is a comfortable and enjoyable place to shop. 90% of you said we add to
Melbourne’s literary and cultural identity and 70% see us as an active community participant.
Buy a copy of Toby Creswell and Craig
PENGUIN BLACK CLASSICS
Mathieson’s highly debatable argument for
At the end of the survey, people could make a comment; 3756 did and, of those, 3700 were very
With 700 titles in the Penguin Black Classics
The 100 Best Albums of All Time (Hardie
positive. So it seems that, by and large, you love us – but you shop around, mostly online and
range, now is the perfect time to start building
Grant, HB, was $49.95, special price
overseas. The opportunity for us now is to see how we can further add value to your in store and
your own collection. Throughout August, you
$39.95), from any Readings shop or online at
online shopping experience, so thank you to those of you who took the time to complete our survey.
can buy any four Penguin Black Classics for
readings.com.au and go in the draw to win all
the price of three at any Readings shop. If you
100 albums on CD (valued at $2000). Instore
pick up a copy of Henry James’ What Maisie
customers will need to complete an entry form
Knew (while stocks last) as part of this deal
and attach a receipt as proof of purchase,
you’ll also receive a 2-for-1 pass to the new
and all online customers will be automatically
film adaptation, a contemporary re-imagining
entered into the draw. Competition closes 31
of the classic novel, to be released 22 August.
August 2013. Only the winner will be notified.
Readings Monthly is a free independent monthly newspaper
published by Readings Books, Music & Film.
Editorial enquiries:
Belle Place at belle.place@readings.com.au
Advertising enquiries:
Ingrid Josephine at ingrid.josephine@readings.com.au or
call 03 9341 7739.
Thank you to Readings staff members and contributors for
your reviews.
Readings donates 10% of its profits each year to The Readings Foundation.
Visit readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation
CINEMA
NOVA
Oslo Davis
RECOMMENDS
THE ROCKET
Visit the Cinema Nova Bar
★★★★★
380 LYGON ST CARLTON
www.cinemanova.com.au
Kim Mordaunt's inspiring
Laos-set family adventure
“An ambitious
thriller assisted
“An extraordinary
movie” The Upcoming UK
by excellent performances” Empire
AUGUST 29
www.oslodavis.com
Join our e-news for updates on the Met Opera,
National Theatre and other stage spectaculars.
SALINGER
An unprecedented look inside the world of JD Salinger,
the reclusive author of Catcher In The Rye
“An
ambitious
thriller
assisted
A
film
by Shane
Salerno
by excellent performances”
Empire
SEPTEMBER 6
R e a d i n g s M O N T H LY AUGUST 2 0 1 3
3
August Events
For more information and updates, please visit the events page at
www.readings.com.au. Please note bookings do not necessarily
guarantee a seat and some events may be standing room only.
In A Letter to Generation Next: Why Labor
(MUP, PB, $24.99) Senator Kim Carr lays out
a heartfelt argument about why politics is
important in our daily lives and demands our
involvement. He chats with Shaun Casey.
Saturday 10 August, 11am
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon St, Carlton, 3053.
Barbara
Arrowsmith
Young
Saturday 10 August, 12.30pm
Readings St Kilda
112 Acland St, St Kilda, 3182.
$5 per person (redeemable against a purchase
on the night). Please book on 9347 1749 or at
the Readings Brain Centre Shop.
Amy
Brown
Join us for the launch of Amy Brown’s The
Odour of Sanctity (VUP, PB, $35). This epic
poem tells the astonishing stories of six
candidates for sainthood.
Free, no booking required.
Gold coin donation. Please book on 9347 6633.
Free, but please book on 9819 1917.
Monday 12 August, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
14
Telling
Stories
21
Wednesday 21 August, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
Tim
Spangler
22
Monday 26 August, 4.30pm
Readings Carlton
27
Maria
Takolander in
conversation
with Craig
Sherborne
In The Double (And Other Stories) (Text,
PB, 29.99), Maria Takolander explores the
unnerving and unforgettable with stories that
range from the dark past of the Soviet era to a
terrifying vision of the near future. She will be
in conversation with author Craig Sherborne.
launch
launch
Thursday 8 August, 7pm–8.15pm
Dax Centre Auditorium, Melbourne Brain
Centre, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3010.
Andy
Griffiths
Steve Bisley’s Stillways (HarperCollins, PB,
$27.99) is a classic memoir of an Australian
childhood in the ’60s. Bisley will be in
conversation with Richard Sowada, ACMI’s
head of film programs.
Thursday 15 August, 6.30pm
Readings Carlton
Saturday 10 August, 3.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, 3122.
12
26
Steve Bisley in
conversation
with Richard
Sowada
Yes, it is that Andy Griffiths! Meet the man
himself, and maybe a rubber chicken or two,
at our Carlton shop, where he will be signing
books including his most recent release, The
39-Storey Treehouse (PanMac, PB, $12.99).
A regular favourite at schools and literary
festivals, Andy is as hilarious in person as on
the page.
Saturday 10 August, 2pm
Readings Malvern
185 Glenferrie Rd, Malvern, 3144.
Come along for a unique opportunity to hear
Barbara Arrowsmith Young speak about her
remarkable journey, from her struggle to
overcome severe learning disabilities – which
were later documented in the bestselling
book The Woman Who Changed Her Brain
(HarperCollins, PB, $29.99) – to her founding
of the Arrowsmith School.
8
15
Friday 23 to Friday 30 August
Acland Street, St Kilda, 3182.
Thomas
Pavitte
Billie B Brown
is in town!
The creators of Billie B Brown are coming to
visit our Hawthorn shop. The author/illustrator
team of Sally Rippin and Aki Art promise to
answer your pressing questions, read from
their latest book and demonstrate how to
draw your own Billie.
$10 per child. Entry includes the workshop
and a copy of their favourite Billie B Brown
book. Please book on 9819 1917 or at the
Readings Hawthorn shop.
Tuesday 27 August, 4.30–5.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
29
Brown Brothers
Winter Poetry
Festival
For our final evening of winter poetry, we’re
hosting poets of the eastern seaboard: Anne
Elvey (Vic), Lachlan Brown (NSW) and Sarah
Day (Tas). Come enjoy their readings over a
warming glass of wine.
Readings Hawthorn
Readings Carlton
launch
Featuring 20 iconic portraits and 20 000 dots,
Melbourne artist Thomas Pavitte’s The 1000
Dot-to-Dot Book (Ilex Press, PB, $19.95) will
amaze and delight you, whatever your age.
Join us to celebrate the Australian release of
this extraordinary book.
launch
Lawyer and commentator Timothy Spangler
is a contributor to Forbes, where he blogs on
the politics of Wall Street regulation and the
regulation of Wall Street politics. His most
recent book is One Step Ahead: Private Equity
and Hedge Funds After the Global Financial
Crisis.
launch
Sophie Cunningham will launch Telling
Stories: Australian Life and Literature
1935–2012 (Monash University Publishing,
PB, $34.95). Edited by Paul Genoni and Tanya
Dalziell, this collection of essays explores the
interaction between literary culture and the
public sphere in Australia.
Readings Carlton
launch
launch
launch
8
National
Bookshop Day
This annual event celebrates bookshops around
Australia. Come say hullo and bring the kids along
to meet our special guests, Where’s Wally and
Spot the Dog. There will be photo opportunities,
giveaways, balloons, cuddles and a special hoo-ha
at our Carlton shop.
Readings Hawthorn
10
Thursday 15 August, 6–8pm
Dax Centre Auditorium, Melbourne Brain
Centre, 30 Royal Parade, Parkville, 3010.
Free, no booking required. Please visit
stkildavillagestripfest.com for the
complete program.
launch
Kim Carr in
conversation
with Shaun
Casey
Free, but please book on 9035 6258 or at
info@daxcentre.org.
launch
7
launch
Tuesday 6 August, 4.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
Friday 9 August, 4.30pm
Readings Hawthorn
The St Kilda Village StripFest is a week-long
festival that’s determined to shake the winter
chill from your bones with burlesque, live
music performances, poetry readings, new art
installations, comedy, cake and more.
launch
The Poetry Collection is gathering individual
poems, chapbooks, collections and anthologies
of poetry that address mental health issues or
trauma. Poets Mal McKimmie, Sandy Jeffs and
Geoff Prince will launch the collection.
Kilda Village
23-30 St
StripFest
Readings Carlton
GOLD COIN DONATIONS: We’re now asking people who attend our events to please make a small gold coin donation, when possible, to The Readings Foundation.
There will be a tin for donations at each event. All contributions over $2 are tax deductible. Thank you for your support.
launch
Much-loved Australian author and illustrator
Bob Graham will be visiting our Hawthorn shop
to sign copies of Silver Buttons (Walker, HB,
$27.95) along with other favourites.
The Dax
Centre Poetry
Collection Launch
launch
We are honoured to have beloved children’s
author Morris Gleitzman at our Readings
Hawthorn shop, where he will discuss his
work, answer questions and, of course, sign a
bunch of books!
15
Bob
Graham
launch
9
Morris
Gleitzman
launch
6
4
R e a d i n g s M O N T H LY A u g u s t 2 0 1 3
New Australian Writing Feature
Alexis Wright won the
Miles Franklin Literary
Award in 2007 for her
surreal and sweeping
Carpentaria. Here she talks
with Morag Fraser about
her new novel, The Swan
Book, that takes flight from
similar dystopic territory, this time guided
by the omnipresence of swans.
‘I
have seen swans all my life. I have
watched them in many different
countries myself. Some of them have
big wings like the Trumpeter Swan of
North America, and when the dust smudges
the fresh breath of these guardian angels, they
navigate through the never-ending dust storms
by correcting their bearings and flying higher
in the sky, from where they glide like Whistling
Swans whistling softly to each other, then
beating their wings harder they fly away. I know
because I am the storyteller of the swans.’
Bella Donna from The Swan Book
Alexis Wright hasn’t seen swans all her life.
There are no swans in her Gulf of Carpentaria
country. There are brolgas. She knows them
‘The Swan
Book marks
a further
development of
Wright’s gift for
poetic intensity
and vernacular
verve ...’
intimately. But swans are new territory.
It is characteristic of Wright to tackle
new territory. She is a writer whose mind is ever
on the loose even as her instincts stay close
to country, to the land she knows in her bones
Morag Fraser interviews Alexis Wright about her
new novel, The Swan Book.
(‘I do take notice – I’m a bush girl really’), the
ground she can render with such breathtaking
beauty and lyric precision (‘Even if it is coming
fast, I still go over it and over it until it sounds
exactly right’). She is a disconcertingly varied
writer – factual, satirical, political, fanciful, poetic.
In Grog War, she diagnosed the alcohol disease
affecting many Aboriginal communities with the
straight talk and clear eye of an investigative
journalist. In Carpentaria, the novel that won
her the Miles Franklin, she soared, taking her
readers into another dimension, an Indigenous
world where myth and reality merge.
The Swan Book marks a further
development of Wright’s gift for poetic intensity
and vernacular verve (she injects Waanyi
language into her narrative, and admires Patrick
Chamoiseau’s play with Creole in Texaco). The
novel chronicles a broken world, a dystopia, a
‘slice of humanity living the life of the overcome’,
but it does so with the wing-beating thrust, the
relentlessly propulsive energy of the swans that
are the novel’s heart. Wright’s characters might
be miserable, ‘standing on the mountain top
ready to die’, but they are – the whole novel is –
‘bizarrely joyous’. And subtly, splendidly defiant.
This is its epigraph:
A wild black swan in a cage
Puts all of heaven in a rage
Robert Adamson, ‘After William Blake’
The Swan Book is set in the north
of a land that is recognisably Australian but
also universal in its apocalyptic dislocation.
It straddles future and present, reality and
dreamscape, with the insouciance one has
come to expect from Wright (no surprise
that she is also an admirer of Sátántangó,
the visionary novel by Hungarian modernist
László Krasznahorkai). It is a land of refugees,
of fringe dwellers, of desiccating weather
changes, a lawless (yet law-haunted)
landscape where ruthlessness dictates social
policy and people turn in on themselves and on
one another. Wright says she was galvanised
no fear of
flying
in part by the policy meanness, the cutting
of Indigenous programs and the stifling of
hope during the Howard years, and the lack
of meaningful dialogue in the Labor years that
followed. But her novel, we agree, is not a tract,
rather an exploratory fictional world, more at
home with uncertainty than political rhetoric.
The uncertain eyes of the book
belong to Oblivia, a young girl rendered
mute by brutality (a rape she remembers in
nightmares). She is lost, coiled in the heart of
a tree, given up by her shamed parents, but
found by Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions,
a refugee, European flotsam, washed up on
the Northern shore but determined to survive,
and have Oblivia survive alongside her. It
is Bella Donna who will teach her reluctant
adoptee to ‘navigate through the never-ending
dust storms’. Bella Donna is a life force. It is
she who will be correcting their bearings and
insisting that they fly ‘higher in the sky’.
‘She was a lovely character to write
about – and she brought the swans,’ Alexis
says, smiling as though remembering an
exotic friend, someone pre-existing. That is
the way she describes all her characters.
They ‘arrive’ like unexpected guests – bearing
gifts. Often her answer to my questions about
their origins is simply ‘I don’t know’. She
knows that she did want, in The Swan Book,
‘to explore the way we treat people, people
who are different, people who are in need,
who don’t have a home’. Bella Donna, Alexis
explains, is part of that ‘movement of refugees,
people being turned away – by the whole
world’. But Bella Donna is no cipher. Like all
Wright’s characters, she is rambunctiously
alive, quirky, inexplicable. As is her Falstaffian
friend the Harbour Master, and her silent,
recalcitrant ward, Oblivia, whose extraordinary
soliloquies open and close the book. Oblivia,
whose ‘brain is as stuffed as some broken-
photograph by vincent long
down Commodore you see left dumped in
the bush’; Oblivia, who will be the promised
bride of Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal
president of Australia; Oblivia who will follow
the swans. (Wright’s novels, with their breadth
and cavalcade of characters, are as resistant to
summary as Dickens’.)
Uncertainty is creative principle for
Alexis Wright. Her character Oblivia is so beset
by the world that ‘she is not sure about a lot
of the things that are happening around her’.
It is that tentativeness that Wright renders so
effectively: ‘That is what I was trying to do,
create that uncertainty about what’s happening,
about what is real and what is not real.’ In
Wright’s created world the distinction is often
a distraction, an irrelevance. Reading her, you
have to stretch your mind.
And finally, the swans: eloquent
creatures, embodying myth, pathos, stimulating
art and poetry in every language. They had
no story in Alexis Wright’s Waanyi culture. But
they fascinated her, so she went hunting. She
found them in poetry, on the Liffey in Dublin,
in America, in Wagner, in Russian ballet and
in the Department of Zoology at the University
of Melbourne. Now, in The Swan Book, she
has wound a story around them. And such
a story: swans in their creatureliness, every
feather distinct, every muscle comprehended,
providing coordinates from the natural world for
humans in their pride and in their vulnerability.
Morag Fraser is the former editor of Eureka
Street and judge of the Miles Franklin
Literary Award.
FATHER’S DAY GIFTS FOR EVERY DAD
the DISCERNING GENTLEMAN
the READER
THE CUCKOO’S
CALLING
RUDD V. ABBOTT
QUARTERLY
ESSAY
ROBERT GALBRAITH
$30 $24.95
Little, Brown. PB
A brilliant debut (of
sorts) mystery in a
classic vein. When a
troubled model falls
to her death, private
investigator Cormoran
Strike, a war veteran,
is called in to look into
the case.
DAVID MARR
$24.99
Black Inc. PB.
Kevin Rudd and Tony
Abbott have resumed
battle for leadership
of the nation. Here, in
one volume, are their
definitive portraits by
Australia’s
pre-eminent biographer and investigative journalist.
ACCEPT THE
CHALLENGE
50 PEOPLE WHO
STUFFED UP
AUSTRALIA
LEIGH MATTHEWS
$45 $36.95
Random House. HB.
A true football legend,
this is a long awaited
autobiography told
with Leigh’s customary
steel, wry humour
and no-holds-barred
honesty.
ARTHUR PHILLIP:
SAILOR,
MERCENARY,
GOVERNOR, SPY
MICHAEL PEMBROKE
$45 $39.95
Hardie Grant. PB.
An expansive tale
of history, war and
intrigue, uncovering
the most unusual and
remarkable life of
Australia’s first governor.
EVERNOTE
SMART NOTEBOOK
BY MOLESKINE
O-CHECK LEATHER
BUSINESS CARD
CASE
$39.95
Fill this book with ideas and
sketches, then let the Evernote
mobile app bring them to your
computer, phone and tablet with
a simple snapshot.
$29.95
Lightweight, functional and simple, this business or credit
card case is made from soft leather that ages with charm.
Excellent for travel, meetings and daily movements.
ROALD DAHL MUGS
MOUSTACHE TOTE BAG
$17.95 each
$29.95
There’s six of these
fantabulous English bone
china mugs with quotes
and iconic characters
from Roald Dahl’s most
popular books.
Made from natural cotton, this
tote is perfect for carrying all
your books, of course.
GUY RUNDLE
$26.95
Hardie Grant. PB.
Our Great Southern
Land started out just
that – Great. Now,
after several centuries
of white settlement,
‘development’ and
‘progress’, has
greatness been chipped away at, and who is responsible?
Coming Soon in September
2 SEPTEMBER
A History of Silence Lloyd Jones
The Counselor Cormac McCarthy
Changing Gears Greg Foyster
Boom Malcolm Knox
Hanns and Rudolf Thomas Harding
12 SEPTEMBER
An Appetite for Wonder Richard Dawkins
23 SEPTEMBER
Bleeding Edge Thomas Pynchon
the YOUNG AT HEART
MY DAD’S THE
COOLEST BOX SET
ROSIE SMITH
$19.99
Beautifully illustrated with
delightful animals, My
Dad’s the Coolest captures the fun-loving bond between
father and child. This is a mini hardback edition with a
drink cooler for dad!
BOOKER T. JONES
$24.95
THE AGE GOOD FOOD
GUIDE 2014
ROSLYN GRUNDY
& JANNE APELGREN
KATRINA GERMEIN
$24.95
My dad says, I’ve
told you fifty million
times, don’t exaggerate. This book brings Dad back by
popular demand with more hilarious material. And yes,
Dad STILL thinks he’s funny.
the MUSIC MAN
SOUND THE ALARM
the CHEF
MY DAD STILL
THINKS HE’S
FUNNY
This album marks Booker’s
return to Stax, a label
revered for the gritty soul
sound he helped create in
the early ’60s, and features
collaborations with some of the finest talents in modern
soul and R&B.
WROTE A SONG
FOR EVERYONE
JOHN FOGERTY
$19.95
Wrote A Song For
Everyone marks
legendary rocker
Fogerty’s ninth studio
solo album since disbanding Creedence Clearwater
Revival. One of the album’s highlights – Fogerty’s
immortal swamp rock smash hit ‘Born On The Bayou’ –
was recorded with Kid Rock.
$24.99
A&U. PB.
Co-edited by two of Melbourne’s most
respected food writers, the Guide
returns to showcase the best places
to eat in Melbourne and throughout
regional Victoria.
COOKED: A NATURAL
HISTORY OF
TRANSFORMATION
BILL’S ITALIAN FOOD
MICHAEL POLLAN
$50 $44.95
Penguin. PB.
A clarion-call for the values of proper
cooking, Michael Pollan takes us on
a journey through the fundamentals
of cooking, uncovering the inner
mysteries of everything from tiny
specks of yeast to a whole hog roast.
BILL GRANGER
HarperCollins. HB.
Concentrating on simple, flavoursome dishes
these recipes embody Bill’s casual cooking and
his spirit of generosity and sharing – approaches
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Written and directed by
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Francis Underwood
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6
New Fiction
book
of
the
month
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante
Text. PB. $29.99
Review: I was recommended Elena Ferrante
by a friend, along with cautionary advice that
Ferrante was ‘close to the bone’, a phrase
somewhat akin to James Wood’s description of
her writing as ‘intensely, violently personal’.
I started with The Days of Abandonment,
perhaps Ferrante’s most popular book in
English, narrated by a woman whose husband
unexpectedly leaves her. While this particular plot
is familiar, Ferrante’s version is unlike any other
I’ve read. Her prose is stunning and polished, yet
retains a raw, stripped-back feel. To be so closely
invested in a character who is openly distraught
was both distressing and irresistible.
Ferrante’s latest novel to be translated
to English is My Brilliant Friend, a work more
accessible than The Days of Abandonment,
but no less powerful for it. Billed as a three-part
bildungsroman and set in a poor, violent Neapolitan
neighbourhood during the 1950s, the novel
explores the friendship between Elena and Lina.
Opening with Lina’s planned disappearance, at age
66, in an attempt ‘to eliminate the entire life that she
had left behind’, Elena decides she will write down
their story. It is through her eyes that we see the two
lives unfold. The girls are poor and studious, but
early on it becomes clear that while Lina is the
more vivacious, the more brilliant, she is also the
‘bad one’, scary and dangerous, while Elena is
the good girl.
One of the aspects I loved most about
My Brilliant Friend was Ferrante’s biting portrayal
of a friendship (Elena and Lina are the most
brilliant example of ‘frenemies’). The two girls
are competitive, caring, jealous, needy; small
slights can cause true suffering, while careless
gestures of affection – great happiness. Such
moments ring with familiarity, but, as with The
Days of Abandonment, Ferrante represents this
commonality in a way I’d never encountered
before. Her novel is clean, pared back and, as
my friend had warned me, so close to the bone
you can feel your teeth grinding. The result is
shockingly good.
Bronte Coates is the online and Readings
Monthly assistant
Australian
Fiction
the Swan book
Alexis Wright
Giramondo. PB. $29.95
Review: Alexis Wright’s
new novel, the first since
2007’s Miles Franklin-winning
Carpentaria, is a return to
familiar stomping ground, and
revolves around the mute
Oblivia Ethylene as she
traverses a landscape now ravaged and set
adrift by climate change.
The story is set in a future dystopia
that’s not wholly unfamiliar; these are ‘antihalcyon times’. We meet Aunty Bella Donna of the
Champions, an old gypsy woman, who early on
pulls a young Oblivia from the hollow of a tree. The
pair return to Bella Donna’s rusted hulk, marooned
in a swamp in an Indigenous compound, surveyed
by white officials of the Army, and captained by
the capricious half-caste, the Harbour Master, a
healing guru of sorts. Oblivia exists here, on the
vast littered lake, until the arrival of Warren Finch,
Australia’s first Indigenous Prime Minister, who has
come to take her as his wife: Oblivia, unknowingly,
was promised to him by family law.
Outside this, it’s difficult to map the
plot of The Swan Book: characters you thought
were departed reappear, darting to and from
the narrative with a startling assuredness that
you wonder if you should have pre-empted
their return. The border that marks myth from
reality moves constantly. Nothing is certain.
The fragility of Oblivia’s mind is
rendered exquisitely in the ever-shifting
landscapes she inhabits, from the deserts
plagued by a sea of rabbits, to flooded lawless
cities. There are beautifully constructed
passages where Wright positions the land like a
living creature, volatile and moving with as much
fierce energy as the operatic cast of characters.
Among many, we meet the three
genies that mind Warren Smith, Rigoletto the
talking monkey, and the Mechanic who looms in
the apartment tower where Oblivia is abandoned
after wedding Warren Smith. Their appearances,
while at times chaotic in their coming and going,
are perfectly cast, in the way they each present
a glinting assessment of Oblivia’s situation, and
the plight of this new world more broadly. Their
dialogue, too, is joyous and darkly-comic. Bella
Donna and the Harbour Master, particularly,
share sage stories and bicker delightfully.
Wright’s prose is at times tricky to
master; it requires a slow reading. There is nothing
straightforward to be found here, and no clean
resolution or singular climactic destination. Some
readers will perhaps be left stranded: though
for those that hold tight, the majesty of Wright’s
storytelling, like the wisest of old tales, is the type
that should be returned to again and again.
Belle Place is editor of the Readings Monthly
the vale girl
Nelika McDonald
Macmillan. PB. $29.99
Review: Nelika McDonald’s
debut novel is about a missing
girl from a small town in NSW,
set in the late ’80s. The author
has chosen her era and setting
well; the fictional town of
Banville feels claustrophobic
and hostile to the two teenage misfits who tell
much of the story. Sarah Vale, the missing girl, is
known as ‘the prostitute’s daughter’. Her friend
and the instigator of the search for her is Tommy
Johns, ‘the boy with the dead mother’. Tommy
explains: ‘everyone in Banville had a little tag like
that at the end of their name … the thing that the
other residents considered most noteworthy.’
From an early age Sarah has been
helping her alcoholic mother, counting her
earnings in the mornings and hiding cash so they
can eat and pay bills. The kids at school taunt
Sarah, and after being assaulted on the way to
school she truants and retreats to her favourite
swimming hole at the creek. It’s from here that
she disappears, leaving her belongings behind.
From
the
Books
Desk
—Martin Shaw,
Readings Books Division Manager
It’s August, which of course means Melbourne Writers Festival time, and the maiden festival of new
director Lisa Dempster. After some puzzling years seemingly chasing the extra-literary, I’m hoping they will
be placing books and their authors front and centre this time around – for connecting them to readers is
to my mind a festival’s sole raison-d’etre. That Laurent Binet is one of the internationals coming is a terrific
early sign: his HHhH was one of my favourite novels of 2012.
New releases in August are a diverse bunch, but no less exciting for that. The major Australian fiction
release is Miles Franklin winner Alexis Wright’s follow up to Carpentaria, The Swan Book, which is set in a
dystopic future Australia, ravaged by climate change. New Readings newsletter editor Belle Place reviews
it in this issue, and it’s clear that if the reader is prepared to give themselves over to what can be at times
a demanding prose style, the rewards are very deep indeed. As Belle writes: ‘for those that hold tight, the
majesty of Wright's storytelling, like the wisest of old tales, is the type that should be returned to again
and again.’
Two fascinating novels in translation are also appearing. From Italy, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend had
our reviewer transfixed: one of the freshest takes on female friendship she had ever read. Text is bringing
out several more hitherto untranslated books by this author in the coming year. Meanwhile German writer
Eugen Ruge has written an epic take on what it meant to live in East Germany both before and after
reunification in In Times of Fading Light, using his own family history as a basis.
A couple of American novels must also be mentioned – an epic Southern tale in the tradition of Cormac
McCarthy and more recently Philipp Meyer – Kent Wascom’s The Blood of Heaven; and the contemporary
master of Southern Gothic, Daniel Woodrell (of Winter’s Bone fame), brings us The Maid’s Version.
In non-fiction, booksellers around the country have been very taken with their advance reading copies of
Girt – a take on Australian history which is both informative and hilarious. Antony Loewenstein’s Profits of
Doom is necessarily a more sombre read, but no less important for that – his thesis of a world increasingly
operating under the principles of ‘vulture capitalism’ has special relevance to our own country’s refugee
detention practices.
Finally a selection of assorted literary highlights: Peter Goldsworthy’s entrancing memoir of childhood,
His Stupid Boyhood; Australian Love Poems, an exquisitely produced selection from new Melbourne
publisher Inkerman & Blunt; and the re-launch of Penguin’s famous green-spined crime fiction titles, now
brought under the ‘Popular Penguin’ banner at just $9.95.
Tommy is an intense boy, with an
itinerant, heartbroken father who leaves him
alone at home for long stretches. Recently his
feelings for Sarah have deepened into love,
and he raises the alarm when he can’t locate
her. He finds an ally in the local policeman,
Sergeant Henson, and together they begin to
search for the girl no one else seems to care
about.
While this is not necessarily ‘crime
fiction’, there was enough suspense to keep
me reading late into the night. The small-town
secrets and entanglements are revealed slowly
and cleverly, and many characters are not who
they seem. My only criticism was some onedimensional characterisation, but this did not
detract from the plot, or the superb pace of the
novel. If you enjoyed Jasper Jones by Craig
Silvey, I would recommend this title.
the brooding small-town world of coastal
Western Australia, this much-loved collection
reveals turnings of all kinds – changes of
heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings,
sudden detours. Struggling against the
terrible weight of their past, Winton’s
characters challenge the lives they’ve made
for themselves.
Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn
Review: Four months
before the Civil War in
1861, Angel Woolsack pisses
blood off a rooftop in New
Orleans, roaring at a mob of
secessionists celebrating the
withdrawal of Louisiana from
the Union states. Not bad for a preacher of
Baptist stock, hell-bound by his Bible, guns and
past. And so begins his ‘gospel’, recounting the
brutal opening years of the nineteenth century,
when righteousness and vengeance would bring
independence, and men were once brothers
– not by blood but love, and war.
The Turning (Film Tie-in)
Tim Winton
Picador. PB. $19.99
In the 1980s Tim Winton
made his mark with tough,
spare stories about youth and
promise, of early parenthood
and the challenges of loyalty.
Twenty years later, he
returned to the form with The
Turning, now a major motion picture. Set in
International
Fiction
The Blood of Heaven
Kent Wascom
Grove. PB. Was $29.99
Special price $24.95
In 1803 Napoleon sold Louisiana to
the Americans after wrestling it back from the
Spanish. Lines were drawn and the southern
states were riddled with gunpowder and
political shootouts. Upon this stage Kent
Wascom paints us The Blood of Heaven,
telling the story of the Kemper brothers,
real men in a novel awash with historical
figures narrated through the fictive lens of
Angel Woolsack. This is the stuff legends
are made of. Emerging from a purgatorial
childhood, chewing hot coals and baited to
hell by his father, Angel has the gift of the
Word. Knowing faith is cursed, he embraces
it, disowns his past and joins the Kemper
brothers in their quest to rid the continent of
monarchy and Europe. Depending on what
side of history you are on, these filibusters
will be sure-fire heroes or villains. Thankfully,
in this tale of nation-making, blindness of
faith and the disease of slavery, Wascom
leaves it for us to decide.
Sheens of Cormac McCarthy are
certainly wet on his sleeve. Readers of
other recent shots at the cowboy gothic,
such as The Son by Philipp Meyer and The
Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, will revel
in the epic violence and poetics. Relish this
rich tapestry of American independence;
its fierceness rings like a blast of biblical
proportions.
Luke May is a freelance reviewer
In Times of Fading Light
Eugen Ruge
Faber. PB. $29.99
Review: Since the fall of
the Berlin Wall, and collapse of
the GDR, there have been
many novels documenting life
in the former Eastern Bloc. A
recent book to emerge from
the rubble is Eugen Ruge’s In
Times of Fading Light. Casting pivotal
moments in twentieth-century Soviet history as
a backdrop, Ruge narrows in on the upheavals
of one family over the course of four
generations.
What’s most remarkable about this
historical fiction is the way it foregrounds the
personal over the political. Borrowing from
his own family history, Ruge brings to life the
humdrum existences of those Berliners trying
to eke out a living behind the Iron Curtain.
Despite the repressive conditions, and that
one character is sent to a Gulag, the novel
is never bleak. It is strangely humorous at
times – Ruge’s characters sooner bicker
over whose turn it is to cook than commit
espionage. It’s a fascinating perspective on a
time and place commonly depicted through a
different gaze.
With its strong emphasis on
patriarchal lineage and family drama, this novel
has an old-fashioned feel to it (a sentiment also
encouraged by the inclusion of a ‘character
list’ on the contents page). Stylistically, though,
it’s very modern. Reading it requires patience:
time switches frequently, as does the narrator’s
point of view. As a result, this book should be
appreciated not for its sum but for its very wellrounded parts.
Anthea Bell must be acknowledged
for her translation: her beautiful turn of phrase
guides the reader through Ruge’s grey housing
estates of Germany to the snowy fields of
Russia to the sun-drenched shores of Mexico.
It’s incredible to think Bell is producing such
fine work well into her seventies. In Times of
Fading Light was awarded the German Book
Prize in 2011, and in translation, it will hopefully
earn Bell the wider recognition she’s long
deserved.
Emily Laidlaw is a freelance reviewer
The Maid’s Version
Daniel Woodrell
Sceptre. PB. $26.99
Review: Smack beneath the
buckle of Bible-Belt Missouri, the
town of Arbor is populated by
folk ‘God has done for, and
done up good’. Alma DeGreer
Dunahew, the maid, recounts to
her grandson past events that
still afflict the town, centering on the unsolved
1929 dance hall explosion that blew 42 souls sky
high. The disaster ‘spared no class or faith, cut
into every neighbourhood and congregation,
spread sadness with an indifferent aim’.
Twenty-eight unidentified victims, including Alma’s
sister Ruby – the town good-time girl and secret
squeeze of Alma’s blue-blood boss – are buried in
a mass grave topped by an angel statue that has
latterly started to dance.
As bleak as it sounds, Woodrell’s
‘crime noir’ is a joy to read simply for the beauty
of his sentences and his deft characterisation,
particularly in the vignettes detailing the lost lives
of the dead and the drink-, love- and lust-afflicted
folk of the Ozarks. Set on the same plateau as
Woodrell’s most renowned book, Winter’s Bone
(try the DVD and CD too, if you like your tales of
hillbilly meth and family ties told with a killer folk
soundtrack), it’s not quite Southern Gothic but
might as well be. The language is as lyrical as it
is brutal, like a novella-length King James Version
in Midwestern twang, and is peppered with such
gleeful alliteration that I get the feeling Woodrell
had fun writing it. If you like where the pared-back writing
of Ron Rash and Cormac McCarthy have taken
William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, but
could do with a little more brocade, The Maid’s
Version is one for you.
Jason Cotter is a freelance reviewer
A Beautiful Truth
Colin McAdam
Granta. PB. $27.99
Review: The blurred line
between humans and animals is
a familiar one, both in science
and in literature. In his latest
novel, Colin McAdam has vividly
woven these worlds together with
humour and tenderness.
It is 1972, and while they live happily
married in rural Vermont, Walt and Judy Ribke
long for a child. But when Judy is left infertile after
an operation, Walt becomes driven by his desire
to ward off his wife’s deepening sadness. A chance
reading of a magazine article, and the era’s leniency
regarding ownership of exotics, leads him to adopt
a baby male chimpanzee, named Looee.
Running parallel to the unlikely story of
the Ribke clan, McAdam paints a portrait of the
Girdish Institute, a primate research centre based
in Florida, where Dr David Kennedy closely
monitors the lives of his captive chimpanzees. So
begins a curious and often profound study of the
basic nature that humans and animals share.
While the chapters describing the
Ribkes’ lives and the meaning Looee brings
to them are rich and warm, their world is
cleverly juxtaposed with that of the chimps at
the field institute. McAdam’s research into the
inner mind of the primate is impressive, as
are the passages he tells almost completely
from the apes’ perspectives. The novel can
be uneven at times, beginning with energy
but slowing somewhat towards the middle,
with some characters making appearances
only briefly before being withdrawn from the
central plot. What remains a constant, though,
is the delicate movement between humans and
animals, their empathy towards each other, and
the imaginative connection that binds them: be
it spouse, child, stranger or ape.
McAdam’s novel is not just a literary
animal fable; it is a confident and edgy work,
which expertly navigates shifts in voice and
explores an abiding and intriguing subject.
Nicole Mansour is from Readings St Kilda
judge born in 1868. An instant celebrity,
Jeremiah is chased by paparazzi, vilified by the
religious right, and overwhelmed by the strange
new society he encounters, not to mention the
scientist he’s falling in love with.
The Gallery of
Vanished Husbands
Tampa
Alissa Nutting
Faber. PB. $27.99
Natasha Solomons
Celeste Price is an eighth-grade
English teacher in suburban
Tampa with a rich, squarejawed husband, a red Corvette
and a secret: a singular sexual
obsession with 14-year-old
boys. It is a craving she
pursues with sociopathic meticulousness and
within weeks of her first term at a new school,
Celeste has lured the charmingly modest
Jack Patrick into her web. With crackling,
stampeding, rampantly sexualised prose, Tampa
is a grand, satirical, serio-comic examination of
desire and a scorching literary debut.
From the author of the charming
bestseller Mr Rosenblum’s List
comes the story of a woman
who breaks free from her strict
upbringing to join the world of
art and artists in ’60s London.
When Juliet’s husband
disappears, then, as far as her conservative
Jewish community is concerned, so does she.
Initially she tries to adhere to their strict rules, but
when she impulsively spends her savings on a
portrait of herself for her thirtieth birthday, she
finds herself breaking away from tradition.
Sceptre. PB. $29.99
The Curiosity
The Mannequin Makers
John Murray. PB. $29.99
Vintage. PB. $32.95
Erastus Carthage has
developed a technique to bring
frozen simple-celled animals
back to life and when his Arctic
research vessel discovers a
body encased in an iceberg, he
seizes the chance to apply his
process to a human. The man who awakens
from death is Jeremiah Rice, a Massachusetts
Rocked by the sudden death of
his wife and inspired by a
travelling vaudeville company,
Colton Kemp decides to raise
his children to be living
mannequins. What follows is a
tale of art and deception that
ranges from small-town New Zealand to the
graving docks of the River Clyde, from an
Craig Cliff
Stephen Kiernan
WHAT I LOVED
WHAT I LOVED
Siri Hustvedt
Hodder & Stoughton. PB. $22.99
Review: What I Loved is Siri Hustvedt’s third novel, published a
decade ago now, and set in New York, opening in 1975. It follows Leo
Hertzberg, an art historian teaching at Columbia, who forms a life-long
friendship with artist Bill Wechsler, after purchasing a piece of his work
long before he was established. The book follows both men as well as
their wives, Erica and Violet, who are both academics, and their sons,
Mark and Matthew, who were born at around the same time. The two families each live in the
same apartment block on Greene Street in SoHo.
Being Siri Hustvedt, the author has lined her novel with a near encyclopedic meandering
through art history, psychology, psychopathy and hysteria, and the nature of identity and
memory. The sharpness of Hustvedt’s mind, combined with her clean prose, is compelling
and utterly engrossing. The research is thorough and learned, for example: Violet is writing
her dissertation on hysteria, and much of this material is taken from the writing and research
of Hustvedt’s sister, Asti, who wrote on the subject for her PhD thesis. This sort of stuff
doesn’t make for light reading, but Hustvedt’s novel is the type, perhaps like Milan Kundera’s,
that delights by teaching you things you didn’t know, and is often startling in the acuteness of
its observations.
Between this, we wobble with these characters over 25 years of love and friendship. The book, in its
latter parts, is teeming with suspense, and a foreboding ripples out across each of their lives. The story
becomes both disturbing and sad, and this nexus is where Hustvedt has created a sublime tension.
On the first page of the second part, we learn of something terrible that afflicts each of the characters (I
won’t spoil it here); the revelation smacked me in the guts, and for days I felt physically bruised by the
event. Again, another shift, when Mark befriends a conceptual artist, Teddy Files. From here, the novel
charges and I found these shifts in pace masterful.
I loved this novel, also, for its depiction of New York. It was a city that I hadn’t visited at the
time I read Hustvedt’s book, but she seemed to have rendered, with familiar warmth, all my
expectations of what it might be like to live in that city at that time. That the characters in What I
Loved exist in an art-world milieu beyond my experience didn’t matter to me at all. Each of these
characters, the two wives perhaps just a little more, were ensnared in my heart for some while
after I’d finished reading.
Belle Place is editor of the Readings Monthly
7
8
The Lolita Legacy
Estelle Tang on the inheritance of Lolita in Emily Maguire’s Taming the
Beast, Amity Gaige’s Schroder, and now, Alissa Nutting’s Tampa
Last month, Alissa Nutting’s debut novel, Tampa, made the Australian news: The Age reported
that some Australian bookshops had decided not to stock it for moral reasons. Given the types
of books that have challenged social standards in the past – Lolita, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The
Story of O – I wasn’t surprised that the Texan author’s tale of a woman, Celeste Price, who seeks
a teaching career in order to seduce teenage boys has attracted similar disgust and criticism.
Nutting’s description of her book as a contemporary version of Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita piqued my interest. Lolita is a classic controversial novel, with a sympathetic monster and
a troubling crime at its core. I’m always curious about the books I think of as Lolita’s children;
a decade ago, Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Emily Maguire’s Taming the Beast also
imagined an affair between a teacher and a student. What would Nutting’s take on this be?
On the surface, there are clear similarities between Nutting’s novel and Nabokov’s.
Both explore the internal workings of an adult who craves, and eventually orchestrates, sex
with an adolescent. We get a direct line to the thoughts of these protagonists, a confronting
experience when our natural instinct is to abhor their actions and empathise with their victims.
Tampa is the racier novel. Once Celeste has picked her target – the shy, blond Jack
Patrick – she encourages him with explicit, post-pornographic conversation: ‘I love that you’re hard,’
she says to him one day after class, fondling him through his cargo shorts. But Tampa lacks Lolita’s
subtlety and powerful characterisation, giving brazen Celeste the mic and Jack a convenient, bland
passivity. In Nabokov’s novel, even through the famously solipsistic haze of Humbert’s prattlings, the
personality of Lolita emerges bit by bit; she’s every part a being in her own right.
The idea of such literary succession had me thinking about other ‘offspring’; Lolita
has undoubtedly been an influence upon many later novels. A book that is, unexpectedly, as
much Lolita’s spiritual successor as Nutting’s is Amity Gaige’s Schroder, even though there are
no sensibility-curdling sexual relations here – just a father and a daughter.
The novel opens with a child’s wishful thinking: 14-year-old Erik Schroder sees a
summer camp brochure that features all-American boys splashing around and adventuring.
Having only been in America for five years, having never fully achieved Americanness, Erik
realises that at Camp Ossipee he could be someone other than a German transplant. First,
though, he needs to write an application. ‘What sort of statement were they looking for?’
he wonders, ‘What sort of boy?’ He dreams himself a new identity – Eric Kennedy – and is
accepted to camp.
Skip forward a couple of decades. He falls in love, gets married, has a child – and
has remained Eric Kennedy his whole life. But then it all unravels in a cruel reversal of what
has gone before: his wife falls out of love, they separate, and gradually she wrests increasing
custody of their child, Meadow, from him.
At first, Eric Kennedy doesn’t seem at all like Humbert. He’s a loving husband
and father, and he’s not a paedophile. But his love of language and fastidious usage recall
Humbert’s glorious way with a sentence. (Another authorial wink: Meadow claims she wants
to be a lepidopterist, recalling Nabokov’s famous love for butterflies.) As Eric describes it, the
moment he awakens to fatherly love is this:
that day occurred when I came home from soccer and Meadow – eighteen months of
age, a whisper of a being – pointed to my sweaty face and said, ‘Daddy rains.’
Thereafter, he sees something of himself in his daughter, something he can admire
and foster. He teaches her how to read by the time she is three years old.
When Eric files for divorce, the custody battle begins to sour. A parental assessment
goes poorly – Meadow ends up atop a tree – and his ex-wife’s lawyer is superior to his. Eric
fears his visitation rights will be cut off completely, and one weekend he takes off with Meadow,
hoping to escape to Canada on his German passport.
It’s a wild decision that, to Gaige’s credit, is entirely credible. The Schroder layer of
the palimpsest gradually begins to show; Erik is self-regarding and erratic, capable of enough
self-deception to describe the incremental decisions that lead to abducting his daughter
without laying the blame at his own feet. Eric/Erik is a magnetic character, arresting and
repellent in equal measure.
Emily Maguire’s Taming the Beast forms a neat triangle with Tampa and Lolita, and is
for me the most emotionally affecting of the three. This searing novel about a girl reconstituting
her life after an affair with her English teacher is a sparking livewire, full of rage, sex and
unresolvable trauma.
Sarah Clark, a bookish, preternaturally bright student, is surprised to find herself
happy and insatiable when Mr Carr seduces her after class one afternoon. Sex seems a natural
complement to her love for literature; after all, it’s what Shakespeare called ‘the beast with two
backs’. ‘Fucking,’ Sarah thinks, ‘was poetry unbound.’ But the teacher’s wife soon discovers
their secret, and he’s spirited interstate, out of her reach.
What follows in Sarah’s life is a whirl of sex, drugs and alcohol. While her friends are
getting engaged and pregnant, she works night shifts at a restaurant and brings men home
to her flat indiscriminately. The only meaningful relationship she has is with her school friend
Jamie, who desires her as much he wants to protect her.
Years later, Mr Carr reappears, looking for her. Sarah is both thrilled and thrown to
find the cause of her dysfunction back in her world. But what is most affecting about this novel
is that there is no resolution. Humbert and Schroder write their testimonies from prison, but
Sarah Clark must live, ‘free’, with the consequences of her seducer’s actions. It’s in Sarah that I
felt I finally heard Lolita, muted by her captor’s self-justifying monologue, truly speak – and the
account’s raw uncertainty is both disturbing and electrifying.
By Estelle Tang
Estelle Tang is a writer and editor. She is the co-founder of the food blog Flavour Palace,
and a bibliotherapist at The School of Life.
inhospitable rock in the Southern Ocean to
Sydney’s northern beaches. Along the way we
meet a Prussian strongman, a family of ship’s
carvers with a mysterious affliction, a
septuagenarian surf lifesaver and a talking
figurehead named Vengeance.
The Siege
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
W&N. PB. Was $30
Cadiz, 1811: Spain is
battling for independence
while America is doing the
same, but in the streets of the
most liberal city in Europe a
different kind of war is at stake.
A serial killer is on the loose,
flaying young women to death, and it is the
job of policeman Rogelio Tizon to find the
murderer and avoid public scandal in a city
already poised on the brink. He soon
discovers that Cadiz is a complex chessboard
on which an unseen hand – a ruthless
assassin, artillery fire, the direction of the
wind, the calculation of probabilities – is
moving the pieces.
Dear Life
Alice Munro
Chatto & Windus. PB. $19.95
Many of these stories are
grounded in Munro’s home
territory – the small Canadian
towns around Lake Huron –
but there are departures too. A
poet finds herself in alien
territory at her first literary
party and is rescued by a seasoned
newspaper columnist; a young soldier,
returning to his fiancée from World War II,
steps off the train before his stop and onto the
farm of another woman; a girl who can’t sleep
imagines that she kills her beloved younger
sister. These indelible tales are about
departures and beginnings, accidents and
dangers, outgoings and homecomings, both
imagined and real.
The Glass Ocean
Lori Baker
Virago. PB. $29.99
In The Glass Ocean Lori
Baker has created a gemlike
Victorian world, a place where
mistakes of the past reappear
and family is not to be
trusted. Flame-haired, sixfoot-two in stocking feet,
newly orphaned Carlotta Dell’oro recounts
the lives of her parents, the solitary
glassmaker Leopoldo Dell’oro and the
beautiful, unreachable Clotilde Girard. In her
telling she discovers the circumstances of
her abandonment and the weight of her
inheritance. Years later, a friend from the past
approaches her, setting in motion the
Dell’oros’ inevitable disintegration.
The Guts
Roddy Doyle
Jonathan Cape. PB. Was $32.95
The man who invented The
Commitments is back. Fortyseven, with a loving wife, four
kids and bowel cancer, Jimmy
Rabbitte doesn’t think he’s
dying but he might be. On his
travels through Dublin, he
runs into two former members of The
Commitments: Outspan, whose own illness is
probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as
gorgeous as ever. In this warm, funny novel,
Jimmy embraces life with a vengeance,
reuniting with a long-lost brother, learning to
play the trumpet and watching his son pretend
to be Bulgarian.
Poetry
Australian
Love Poems 2013
Mark Tredinnick (ed)
Inkerman & Blunt. PB. $26.95
Review: We’re not really
ones for grand romantic
gestures, or so many
Australians would have you
think. The first publication out
of Inkerman & Blunt, Australian
Love Poems 2013, thoroughly
disproves this notion. Publisher Donna Ward
(former editor of literary journal Indigo) has said
the collection aims to ‘bring Australians out of
the closet on love, and on their love of poetry’.
Edited by Mark Tredinnick, the
collection is accessible to newcomers and
those already enamoured with verse. It spans
the stages and forms of love and is divided
into several sections; like a relationship,
reading this collection takes you on a journey.
All forms are represented: haiku
(poignant pieces by Emilie Zoey Baker and
Paul Kelly), villanelle, prose poems, and free
verse. There are crushes, weddings, hook-ups
and fallings out. Some poems are mythical
and religious in their desire, others are bold
and libidinous: ‘when my tugging oil-slick fist
/ has you tumescent and butting at my lips; /
when every nerve’s erect as a spinifex’ (Lisa
Jacobson).
Bronwyn Lovell’s ‘Running into Your
Ex’ is instructive and ever so relatable, where
Alex Skovron’s ‘A Valediction’ is pure grace and
gratitude.
Many of the writers marvel at the
changes of language in the wake of new
technology (you ‘less than three’ me?) or
how it hinders us: ‘all this technology at our
fingertips and still we can’t speak’ (Carolyn
Leach-Paholski). Love finds itself in music
(Chet Baker, The Go-Betweens and Colin
Hay get mentions), in familiar imagery of
flowers and birds – so many birds! – and
more surprising forms: emergencies, feet and
Jimmy Stewart.
In ‘Cartography’, Jordie Albiston asks
‘what is a harbour but a heart’. The love pulses
through this book like ships at a wharf, in a
continuous cycle of loving and having loved.
Jessica Alice Smith is a freelance reviewer
Anthology
Granta 124: Travel
John Freeman (ed.)
Granta. PB. $27.99
In this issue, Granta presents
a panoramic view of our
shared landscape and
investigates our motivations
for exploring it. Hari Kunzru
travels to Chernobyl, Detroit
and Japan to investigate the
phenomenon of disaster tourism. Policemanturned-detective-turned-writer A Yi describes
life as a provincial gumshoe in China.
Physician Siddhartha Mukherjee visits a
government hospital in New Delhi, where he
meets Madha Sengupta, at the end of his life.
And Haruki Murakami revisits his walk to Kobe
in the aftermath of the 1995 earthquake. Here
are eighteen collisions between people and
the places that have made them, shaped them
and terrified them.
New Crime
Death Angel
Meet
the Bookseller
Dead Write
Annie Condon, Readings Hawthorn
with Fiona Hardy
The finale in an entertaining trilogy along the lines
of Rake – i.e. with a sassy barrister you can’t help
sighing about even when cheering him on.
Linda Fairstein
Little, Brown. PB. $29.99
From my experience, Central
Park in the daytime is not the
hotbed of murder I’d expected
from the bloodthirsty books I
tend to read. In Death Angel, the
history of the beloved park is
laid bare after a body washes
up near the Bethesda Fountain – and it may lead
to the discovery of more than just the one twisted
death. As the park, a sanctuary to thousands of
New Yorkers and tourists, menaces as a hunting
ground for a psychopath, Assistant DA Alex
Cooper searches for the killer, starting with the
clues found in the park’s buried past.
Harry Curry: Rats and
Mice
Stuart Littlemore
book
of
the
month
the english girl
Daniel Silva
HarperCollins. PB. $29.99
Gabriel Allon is one of the more
appealing heroes of crime
literature: master art restorer,
spy, assassin. (Who could
resist?) Here, he is searching
for Madeline Hart, the English
girl of the title, who has
disappeared from the island of Corsica. Her
kidnappers know exactly who they have in their
hands, and Allon is the person to find them –
the world cannot find out about her affair with
Britain’s prime minister. A heart-stopping,
world-travelling thriller by a writer who weaves
suspense around his reader like a thread.
HarperCollins. PB. Was $29.99
Green Popular Penguins
Barrister Harry Curry is a man
who likes to keep moving.
Discontented with Sydney’s
politics, he’s skipped off to a
Victorian border town – which has
put a bit of distance between him
and the love of his life, Arabella
Engineer: a British-Australian junior counsel with a
rocketing career, and pregnant to one Harry Curry.
The perennial orange Popular
Penguins have lived up to their
name in my own house, and in
homes across the rest of world
too. Now there’s a new batch for
the crime lovers among us: this
collection of 50 crime-fiction
classics are bound in pleasing green covers you’ll
want to line your shelves with!
Penguin. PB. $9.95 each
NEW IN AUGUST from
TEX T PU BLI S HING , Small Publisher of the Year
The Never List
Koethi Zan
Random House. PB. $29.95
TEX TPUBLISHING.COM. AU
Can you Commit the
perfeCt Crime?
the sensational debut thriller
A wonderful new
novel by The AuThor of
The commiTmenTs
Roddy doyle
Alex Prévost, heading home from
dinner in Paris one night, is seized
from the street and thrown in the
back of a van. It does not get
better from there: she is put in a
box too small to stand and too
narrow to sit, and then she is left.
The police, thanks to a witness, know she has been
abducted; however, they don’t know who she is, or
who’s done it. But Alex knows who did it, and she
also knows why. Alex is a French thriller that has
exploded in popularity and contains enough twists
to turn your head all the way around.
THE Dark Heart of
Florence
Little, Brown. PB. $29.99
There’s so much more at
randomhouse.com.au
newspapers and magazines. If I didn’t
work in a bookshop, I would still spend
a lot of time (and money) in bookshops.
What’s your favourite book and why?
Michele Giuttari
/randomhouseau
I grew up in a house filled with books,
suffered and what they carry to this day.
Maclehose Press. PB. $19.99
ALICE SEBOLD
desperate to go to school and learn to
read. My parents were journalists and
Maybe it’s something to do with being born
Pierre Lemaitre
‘Zac and Mia are
23 true accounts of
unforgettable—they put disaster and survival.
hooks into my heart that
How far would you
are still there.’ FIONA WOOD
go to stay alive?
I have always loved books, and was
Review: Nineteen years ago, best friends
Sarah and Jennifer were in a car accident that
killed Jennifer’s mother. The two girls, bound
together, made a list of things to never do that
would keep them safe. Sixteen years ago, the list
was obeyed religiously, but it didn't save them
from Jack Derber, or the chains in his cellar.
Thirteen years ago, Sarah escaped. Jennifer did
not. Now, Sarah has a new list. Don’t touch
people. Don’t go outside. Always be prepared,
for anything. But Jack’s parole hearing is coming
up and to stop him being released she is going to
have to break some rules.
The Never List is tense and horrifying.
Sarah and her fellow captives are physically
scarred and each has an enormous emotional
burden that comes at you like a lunged knife.
There are parts where you’ll be as nervous and
frightened as the characters themselves, though
there are parts where you’ll be shaking your head
in frustration (they’re overtly cautious sometimes,
but nonsensically brazen at others).
Despite the topic – kidnapping of this
kind is not for the faint-hearted – it is, thankfully,
free of the extended torture-porn writers seem
to think is always necessary, with only mere
glimpses into the past to reveal what the girls
Alex
‘Elena Ferrante
will blow you away.’
Why do you work in books?
Formerly a Florentine police chief,
Giuttari knows his crimes and has
the writing chops to make them
enthralling. In his sixth book with
Chief Superintendent Michele
Ferrara, Florence relaxes at the
news of a notorious serial killer’s
death, but all too soon, a senator,
and his butler, are killed. Ferrara thinks there is a
connection, but the corruption and vengeance
within his city create their own wall against the truth.
in the same year that Readings began?!
Best book you’ve read lately?
I just read The Death of Bees by Lisa
O’Donnell, which won the Commonwealth
Writers Prize. It’s about two sisters who are
struggling to survive trauma and poverty.
It’s tragic yet funny, and utterly real and
compelling. One of the sisters is a quirky
Aspergers-ish type, and the older sister
struggles to protect her younger sibling,
hide a terrible secret and continue her
regular teenage life. It’s an amazing debut
novel. I put off reading the last 30 pages
for two days because I didn’t want to part
company with the characters.
Name a book that has changed
the way you think.
All of Alice Munro’s books have shown
me how the small details of life and
relationships matter. Munro is such a
beautiful writer, and her stories illuminate
those moments that can change a life. I
truly wish I could meet her.
It It would have to be Olive Kitteridge by
Elizabeth Strout. It’s a perfect character
study of a retired school teacher in a small
coastal town in Maine. I admire the way
Olive is shown through interlinked stories,
and her strengths and flaws are given
equal weight. It’s also the kind of book that
demonstrates how life shapes us, and how
profound another person’s influence on us
can be. I’m so looking forward to reading
Strout’s new book, Burgess Boys.
What book did you love as a kid?
When I was young I loved Richard Scarry’s
books, particularly The Best Storybook Ever.
If I couldn’t sleep I’d hop out of bed and look
through the illustrations. When I was older I
loved Enid Blyton’s boarding school series –
Malory Towers and St Clare’s.
What’s the strangest experience
you’ve had in a bookshop?
One Saturday morning, bleary-eyed and
caffeine-deprived, a customer pointed his
finger at me. ‘You look like someone,’ he
said. ‘I’ve got it! I know who it is!’ He told me
I was a dead ringer for … Margie Abbott.
After telling my husband this, he now takes
great pleasure, when seeing Margie on
TV, at shouting ‘Quick, look … It’s your
doppelganger …’
9
10
New Young Adult Fiction
See books for kids, junior and middle readers on page 15.
book
of
the
month
Pureheart
F
ormer lobbyist and political
insider Guy Pearse, media
and politics commentator David
McKnight and environment
writer Bob Burton cut through
the spin to expose the underbelly
of an industry whose power
continues to soar while its
expansion feeds catastrophic
climate change.
Cassandra Golds
Penguin. PB. $17.99
Review: Award-winning author Cassandra
Golds’ new novel, Pureheart, is a beautiful and
multilayered book that had me contemplating its
meaning long after I finished reading.
Deirdre and Galahad first meet when
they are five years old, when Gal comes to live
with Deirdre and her grandmother at
The Sky So Heavy
Claire Zorn
UQP. PB. $19.95
w w w . n e w s o u t h b o o k s . c o m . a u
Meet Celeste Price.
A sexual predator with a shocking,
very particular, obsession.
We dare you to read it, and then not talk to
everyone you know about it.
Review: Certain books we
read as adolescents stay with
us. For Claire Zorn, Louise
Lawrence’s Children of the
Dust planted the seed in her
mind that would eventually
become her debut novel about
a nuclear winter. For this reader, another
haunting post-apocalyptic story, Robert C.
O'Brien’s Z is for Zachariah, came to mind.
Other comparisons will be made but The Sky
So Heavy can hold its own; Zorn’s version of
events seems even closer to home, literally
and figuratively.
Set in the Blue Mountains of
Sydney, the story allows us to get to know
Fin, his family and his high school crush,
Lucy, before throwing the whole lot into chaos
when a nuclear threat becomes reality. Fin
and his younger brother Max are abandoned,
surrounded by radioactive snow. Food
supplies are diminishing and hunger is turning
neighbours into enemies. The action ramps
up further when Fin and Max are reunited
with Lucy and join forces with an unlikely
companion for a dangerous mission to the city.
Fin is a great character – bright and
responsible but not too perfect – and Zorn’s
tone is spot-on. The relationship between the
brothers is a stand-out. Highly recommended
for teens.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
So Much Closer
Susane Colasanti
Scholastic. PB. $16.99
TamPa, a satirical rendering of a
monstrously misplaced, unrelenting desire.
The most polarising book you’ll read this year.
#discusstampa
Review: Brooke has been in
love with Scott Abrams for the
past two years. She’s never told
him how she feels, but that’s all
going to change at the junior
picnic. Brooke’s plans are turned
on their head though when,
during their brief conversation, Scott reveals he is
moving to New York. Shattered, Brooke convinces
her mum that she needs to change schools and
should move to New York to live with her dad,
Corbenic, a block of flats owned by Deirdre’s
grandmother. Over the few short months
that Gal is there, an undeniable love forms
between the two young souls. Deirdre’s
grandmother is disgusted, banishing Gal and
forbidding the two from ever seeing each
other again. It’s not until the night that Deirdre
returns from her grandmother’s funeral that
Galahad dares to come back. But instead of
leaving with Deirdre like Gal had planned,
the pair must search the decaying labyrinth
of Corbenic to find a secret the building
has been hiding from them since their first
encounter.
Golds’ ability to turn a crumbling
old building into a captivating main character
is astounding, leaving me to ponder the
meanings and secrets our own homes
may hold.
Katherine Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
who she has barely spoken to in six years. And
with that, Brooke up and leaves her whole life for a
boy who barely knows she exists.
In New York, Brooke is beside herself
with excitement to discover Scott is at the
same school as her, and as the pair strike up a
friendship, Brooke wonders when the best time
is to tell Scott that she moved for him.
So Much Closer is heaps of fun.
Yes, I understand it’s slightly far-fetched, but
the characters are creative and memorable,
and the city of New York provides the perfect
bustling setting. Great for girls looking for
something light and entertaining, ages 13
and up. KD
Invisibility
Andrea Cremer & David Levithan
Penguin. PB. $16.99
Cursed with invisibility, Stephen
is used to being ignored, but
then he meets Elizabeth and is
shocked to discover she can
see him. For Elizabeth,
invisibility has always seemed
like a dream way to stay safe,
but everything is different with Stephen. With
him, she wants to be seen. As Stephen and
Elizabeth grow closer, an invisible world of
grudges and misfortunes, of spells and curses,
needs to be confronted if Stephen is to become
visible. But entering this world could mean the
difference between life and death.
City of Bones: The
Mortal Instruments
Book 1 (Film Tie-In)
Cassandra Clare
Walker. PB. $19.95
This is the movie tie-in of book
one in the bestselling series
The Mortal Instruments. Clary
Fray is seeing things: vampires
in Brooklyn and werewolves in
Manhattan. Irresistibly drawn to
the Shadowhunters, a secret
group of warriors, Clary encounters the dark
side of New York City – and the dangers of
forbidden love. The movie is scheduled for
release in Australia on 22 August 2013.
New Non-Fiction
Australian
Non-Fiction
Girt: The Unauthorised
History of Australia
David Hunt
Black Inc. PB. $29.99
Review: Talented
comedy writer David Hunt
has created a remarkable work
of pop history with Girt – a
well-researched, engaging and
articulate lampooning of
Australia’s earliest colonial years.
Taking an early cue from Tim Flannery’s
controversial view of Indigenous Australians
as being responsible for destroying the
continent’s ancient megafauna with fire, Hunt
goes on to recount other lesser-known topics
from Australian history, such as the Makassar
Indonesian fisherman who traded goods with
Arnhemlanders in the sixteenth century, and the
seventeenth-century Dutch explorers’ strange
habit of nailing plates to trees.
The bulk of Girt is the story of
Australia’s first penal colony and the eclectic
mass of pastoralists, priests, convicts,
prostitutes and military men who helped shape
its beginnings. Few historical figures escape
Hunt’s lampoonery: he describes Governor
Arthur Phillip’s greatest achievement before
settling New South Wales as having two first
names, just as he portrays botanist Joseph
Banks as a ‘publicity slut’ who threw too many
parties for his onboard groupies.
Hunt certainly does a fine job of
weaving together Australia’s narrative with
his own brand of absurdist humour; however,
his voracious appetite for Australian history is
tempered, at times, by his persistent need to crack
jokes. As this is such a thoroughly researched
book, I sometimes felt that the more fascinating
anecdotes from Australia’s historical backwaters
were being derailed by Hunt’s love for a quip.
Despite this, there are some
absolutely hilarious passages in Girt that are
also superbly written. It is a book that manages
to tease out the eccentric streak in the national
character with informative and satirical flair. It
might not be an authoritative history, but you are
guaranteed to be left learned and entertained.
Steve Bidwell-Brown is from Readings Carlton
Profits of Doom: How
vulture capitalism is
swallowing the world
Antony Loewenstein
MUP. PB. $32.99
Review: Australian journalist
Antony Loewenstein has
travelled to Papua New Guinea,
Afghanistan, Haiti and around
Australia to report on a growing
trend of ‘vulture capitalism’ where
the political and economic
culture encourages ‘corporate vultures to swoop
down upon the carcasses of weakened institutions
and industries’. Vulture capitalism produces
privatised and for-profit prisons, refugee detention
centres, militaries and disaster reconstruction
projects. The corporations that
run these ventures lack transparency and
accountability, and many people are unaware of
the power they wield.
I was certainly unaware of the extent
to which Australia’s refugee detention centres are
privatised. It costs the government more money
to keep an asylum seeker in detention than in the
community, reports Loewenstein, and it is in the
profit-making interest of the private companies
running the centres to hold people for as long as
possible. Loewenstein also exposes the power of
the fossil fuel corporations and travels to James
Price Point and PNG to examine the social and
environmental consequences. He writes that
‘calling out the corporations that are causing
global environmental damage is vital’.
Loewenstein builds on ideas from
Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine, which
documents what she terms ‘disaster capitalism’.
Klein investigates the extent to which, after war or
natural disaster has ravaged a nation, government
deregulation and privatisation is imposed without
democratic participation. Loewenstein sees a new
brand of vulture capitalism, one that goes beyond
the exploitation of disaster to infringe on more and
more aspects of society.
But Loewenstein’s book is not all doom
and gloom: he talks to people on the ground, each
fighting against corporate power and predatory
capitalism. His aim is to demand accountability
and start a global debate. With a voice that is
reasoned and intelligent, he warns of ‘a future that
is being written without your consent’.
Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton
Fairfax: The Rise
and Fall
Colleen Ryan
MUP. PB. $32.99
Review: A common view,
established over the past few
years, is that the once proud
and prevailing newspaper
empire, Fairfax, is dying a slow
but sure death. Colleen Ryan,
who was a Fairfax journalist
for more than 35 years, does little to dispel
this consensus.
Ryan’s new book has been labelled
a ‘devastating expose’ of the continual failures
of the various identities behind Fairfax to
reverse its demise. Beginning with the media
empire’s founding as a family company, Ryan
charts Fairfax’s rise to the top of the Australian
newspaper hierarchy, to its progressive undoing
and dramatic fall. A host of familiar names
feature, many of whom have attempted to stifle
or appropriate the company, among them Kerry
Packer, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Keating and even
members of the Fairfax family itself.
Ryan writes with the type of
thoroughness and clarity you would expect
from one of Australia’s most decorated
journalists. She has three Walkley awards,
including a Gold Walkley, as well as the
Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year
Award. Yet the strength of her latest work is her
ability to craft a timeline of the Australian media
climate that has at times supported a thriving
Fairfax and at other times dealt it ostensibly
fatal blows.
Since its beginning, Fairfax has been
central to a healthy Australian democracy.
Despite incursions by key individuals seeking to
use it for their own interests, like Packer or Gina
Rinehart, Fairfax prides itself on an unwavering
journalistic integrity. To that end, it will perhaps
always be an icon of the Australian media, yet
Ryan’s outlook is grim. This is an immensely
telling work of non-fiction, in regards to both
the Australian media environment and our
capricious corporate culture.
Dexter Gillman is a freelance writer
11
Killing Fairfax
The Long Road to Changi
HarperCollins. HB. Was $40
HarperCollins. PB. $35
Pamela Williams
Covering a decade and a half of
lost opportunity and
mismanagement, this story
culminates in Fairfax’s
catastrophic loss of the
classified advertising market to
the internet, as the famous
‘rivers of gold’ run dry. The twist in the tale is
that the new companies dominating the online
advertising market were not just hungry internet
start-ups: rather, the new leaders in the field
came under the direct influence of two
traditional media tycoons, James Packer and
Lachlan Murdoch, both intent on expanding
their own online businesses. This is the insiders’
story of the deals, the power plays and the
machinations behind the influential media
organisation’s decline.
The Australian
Leadership Paradox
Geoff Aigner & Liz Skelton
A&U. PB. $29.99
Australians bemoan the quality
of our leaders, so no wonder,
then, that even the most
passionate and talented among
us hesitate to take up this
important role. The Australian
Leadership Paradox offers a
circuit breaker for this impasse, exposes the
inherent tensions in Australians’ historical
relationship with authority, and interrogates our
culture of mateship and egalitarianism. Working
with hundreds of leaders from government,
business and community organisations, the
authors show how it’s possible for leadership to
be inspiring, sustainable and effective in
bringing positive economic and social change.
Big Coal: Australia’s
Dirtiest Habit
Guy Pearse, David McKnight
& Bob Burton
New South. PB. $34.99
Australia’s dirtiest habit is its
addiction to coal. But is our
dependence on it a road to
prosperity or a dead end? Are
we hooked for life? And who is
profiting from our addiction?
Former lobbyist and political
insider Guy Pearse, media and politics
commentator David McKnight and environment
writer Bob Burton cut through the spin to expose
the underbelly of an industry whose power
continues to soar while its expansion feeds
catastrophic climate change.
A Letter to Generation
Next: Why Labor
Kim Carr
MUP. PB. $24.99
Senator Kim Carr was the third
minister to resign after Kevin
Rudd declined to challenge
Prime Minister Julia Gillard
following former Arts Minister
Simon Crean’s call for a
leadership spill in March 2013.
But he’s still a true believer. In A Letter to
Generation Next: Why Labor he lays out his
heartfelt argument about why politics is
important in our daily lives and demands our
involvement. A pragmatic idealist, Carr makes
the case for activism, and proposes that
for the current generation of social democrats,
the time has come to reinvigorate the
Australian Labor Party.
Peter Ewer
In the 1930s, while war raged in
Europe, Australians were
assured by politicians that the
country was safe as long as the
Union Jack fluttered over
‘Fortress Singapore’. The reality
was so different: Britain,
over-stretched and under threat, skimped on the
forces it needed to hold the base. When
Japanese forces began flexing their muscles in
the Pacific, a hasty defence plan was put in place
and Australian troops, aircrews and sailors were
dispatched to Singapore. The understanding was
that the Aussies would soon put the Japs in their
place. But it was so much wishful thinking.
Historian Peter Ewer constructs a riveting picture
of a war which was lost before it began.
Anthology
Now We Are Ten:
Griffith Review 41
Julianne Schultz (ed.)
Text. PB. $27.99
Review: This tenth
anniversary edition of the Griffith
REVIEW steers clear of a
self-congratulatory birthday and
gets straight to the point: what
does the future hold for Australia
and the world? A cross-section
of Australia’s writers and thinkers address the key
questions that are keeping the nation up at night,
including the treatment of refugees, the war on
drugs, increasing surveillance, the changing
nature of work, and LGBT rights. The quality of
the collection puts paid to the idea that perhaps
we’ve become a nation of whiners, hesitant to
appreciate the good times.
Brendan Gleeson’s piece on the
effects of a long period of neoliberalism in
Australia is a stand-out. Gleeson's ominous
depiction of Melbourne's streets in an age
of PSOs and relentless budget cuts is quite
chilling. It’s one of the only recent mainstream
pieces to draw attention to the serious danger
we face of losing the public system altogether.
Melissa Lucashenko’s ‘Down and Out in
Brisbane and Logan’ is a useful companion
piece to this, a personalised account of what
unemployed life means in Australia today. Her
interviewees are a defiant, and enlightening,
response to the erroneous claim that all
Australians have shared in the good times.
The fiction piece from Ali Alizadeh is
the perfect choice for a collection focused on
our political woes. Alizadeh’s writing is blatantly
anti-capitalist without the grating connotations
of the label: his work is engaging, terrifying, and
almost cinematic in style.
Chris Dite is from Readings Carlton
History
1913: The Year before
the Storm
Florian Illies
Profile. PB. $27.99
The stuffy conventions of the
nineteenth century are receding
into the past and 1913 heralds
a new age of unlimited
possibility: Kafka falls in love;
Louis Armstrong learns to play
the trumpet; a young
seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first
boutique. Yet everywhere there is the
12
premonition of ruin. The number 13 is
omnipresent, and in London, Paris, Vienna,
Berlin, Trieste, artists take the omen and act as if
there were no tomorrow, while in Munich an
Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf
Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes. Told with
Illies’s laconic irony, 1913 reveals a narrative
patched together from documentary traces and
biographical fragments to present an intimate
cultural portrait of a world that is about to
change forever.
The Second World War
Antony Beevor
Phoenix. PB. Was $35
The Second World War
began in August 1939 on
the edge of Manchuria and
ended there exactly six years
later with the Soviet invasion
of northern China. The war in
Europe appeared completely
divorced from the war in the Pacific and China,
and yet events on opposite sides of the world
had profound effects. Using scholarship and
research, Antony Beevor assembles the whole
picture in a narrative that extends from the
North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the
snowbound steppe to the north African desert,
to the Burmese jungle, Gulag prisoners
drafted into punishment battalions, and
to the unspeakable cruelties of the SinoJapanese War.
Biography
His Stupid Boyhood
Peter Goldsworthy
Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99
Review: Peter
Goldsworthy has laid
himself open for inspection –
like one of his cadavers from
medical school – in this memoir.
Starting with his first sexual
inclination, at age four, towards
crank-handled cars (I recently heard a different
explanation of ‘cranking’ which I won’t even
go into), Goldsworthy meanders through his
childhood memories, closing the book at the
age of eighteen for the very sensible reason
that: ‘The age at which I was obliged to take
adult responsibility for any crimes I might
commit makes a tidy end point for a memoir
of childhood, and especially childishness. It
also makes for a legally safe end point, given
the various sins and stupidities that can be
confessed under the cover of diminished
responsibility.’
There are plenty of light-hearted
sins and stupidities between the covers of
this book. For me, the memoir really hits its
straps once Goldsworthy and his family arrive
in Darwin. Goldsworthy writes brilliantly and
with immediacy about his years spent breaking
into boatsheds; picking fights with, well, just
about anyone; collecting butterflies, beetles,
lizards; and perhaps boring the girls who spent
any amount of personal time with the goodlooking but slightly distracted Goldsworthy. His
girlfriend Mouse gets special mention for her
particular ‘handling’ of the young Goldsworthy.
The early university years were highlights also.
Goldsworthy’s loneliness and uncertainty as
he embarks on adult life are covered up by a
Che Guevara beret and bravado. I loved the
sweet clash of cultures where long-haired
hippy Goldsworthy marches at anti-war
demonstrations during the day and goes
drinking with his army buddies at night.
If you adore Peter Goldsworthy’s
novels (which I do), you’ll enjoy spotting familiar
landmarks from his fiction. The clarity and
honesty he brings to each of his books are
clearly a direct result of his stupid boyhood.
Gabrielle Williams is from Readings Malvern
Thomas Quick
Hannes Råstam
Canongate. PB. $27.99
‘I wonder what you’d think of me
if you found out that I’ve done
something really serious …’ So
begin the confessions of Thomas
Quick, Scandinavia’s most
notorious serial killer. In 1992,
behind the barbed wire fence of a
psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane, Quick
confessed to the murder of an 11-year-old boy who
had been missing for 12 years. Over the next nine
years, Quick confessed to more than 30 unsolved
murders. In the years that followed, a fearless
investigative journalist called Hannes Råstam
became obsessed with Quick’s case. In the spring
of 2008, Råstam travelled to where Thomas Quick
was serving a life sentence. He had one question
for Sweden’s most abominable serial killer, but
the answer turned out to be far more terrifying than
the man himself.
Holy See, Unholy Me!
Tim Fischer
HarperCollins. PB. $33
As the first resident Australian
Ambassador to the Holy See,
Tim Fischer is in the unique
position of being able to tell
what it’s really like in the seat of
power in Rome. Here he reflects
on his time in the Vatican, the
protocols and the people, and also on the role
that religion still has to play in the lives of future
generations. Armed with the skills he learned as
an activist politician – and with his trusty black
Akubra – Tim learned to navigate this strange
new world and has lived to tell the tale!
One Thousand Cuts:
Life and Art in Central
Australia
Rod Moss
UQP. PB. $59.95
Since making his home in Alice
Springs 30 years ago,
acclaimed Australian artist Rod
Moss has formed enduring
intimacies with the families of
Whitegate camp on the town’s
eastern fringe. In One Thousand
Cuts, he continues the story he began in The
Hard Light of Day and through stories and
descriptions, paintings and photographs, he
uncovers the places where his own family and
art intersect with the lives of those in the
Whitegate mob. Here are powerful moments of
their shared everyday life, from the majesty of the
land to the necessity of story, from the intensity
of kin to the rhythm of grief.
MUSIC
The Beethoven
Obsession
Brendan Ward
New South. PB. $29.99
Review: In the world of
classical music, the 32 piano
sonatas from the great
composer Ludwig van
Beethoven are considered the
pinnacle of the art form,
collectively recognised as ‘the
greatest piano music ever written’. In the late
1990s, only a handful of elite pianists had made
recordings of the full set – but never had it
been done by an Australian pianist, nor on an
Australian-built piano. The Beethoven
Obsession recounts the serendipitous series of
events that led former TV cameraman, and
Beethoven enthusiast, Brendan Ward to
propose this marathon task to Dutch-Australian
pianist Gerard Willems and Tasmanian
piano-maker Wayne Stuart. Stuart’s
controversial new piano, handmade from Huon
Pine, sought to revolutionise piano engineering
in the face of an industry rusted on to the
Steinway standard.
Among the trials and tribulations of
planning, funding, recording and releasing
the most ambitious project ever realised in
Australian classical music, Ward skilfully
weaves together history and storytelling. From
the biographies of each protagonist to the
development of the Australian classical music
scene and the politics of piano manufacturing,
the Beethoven recordings are skilfully situated
within a broader cultural context. As producer,
pianist and piano-maker each grapple with the
technical and cultural weight of Beethoven’s
masterpieces, we gain valuable insights into
the moods, inspirations and tortured life of the
German composer.
Ward’s description of the music
itself is also impressive, conveying the
richness, beauty and fiendish difficulty of
the sonatas clearly and evocatively – it’s a
credit to Ward’s writing that familiarity with
Beethoven and his sonatas isn’t necessary to
enjoy the book. The Beethoven Obsession is
a compelling and rewarding read for lovers of
music, history and great Australian success
stories alike.
Alan Vaarwerk is a freelance reviewer
humour
Comic Genius
Matt Hoyle
Hachette. HB. Was $33
Granted extraordinary
access, photographer Matt
Hoyle has captured his subjects
in portraits that are works of art in
themselves – by turns zany and
deadpan, laugh-out-loud and
contemplative. Accompanying them are firstperson reflections from each of the comedians on
life and laughter that always cut straight to the
heart of comedy: it’s funny because it’s true. This
tribute to the kings and queens of comedy draws
together such legendary names as Steve Martin,
Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Eddie Murphy, Robin
Williams and Ricky Gervais.
Personal
Development
Daring Greatly
Brené Brown
Pearson. PB. $22.99
Every day we experience the
uncertainty, risks and
emotional exposure that define
what it means to be vulnerable,
or to dare greatly. In Daring
Greatly, researcher and
thought leader Dr Brené Brown
challenges everything we think we know about
vulnerability. Based on 12 years of research,
she argues that vulnerability is not weakness,
but rather our clearest path to courage,
engagement and meaningful connection.
Popular Science Art & Design
with Kate O’Mara from
Readings at the Brain Centre
with Margaret Snowdon from
Readings Carlton
Food & Gardening
Feral
Living Modern:
The Sourcebook
of Contemporary
Interiors
Fired Up: Vegetarian
George Monbiot
Allen Lane. HB. $39.99
How many of us sometimes feel
that we are scratching at the walls
of this life, seeking to find our way
into a wider space beyond? Feral
is the lyrical and gripping story of
George Monbiot's efforts to
re-engage with nature and
discover a new way of living. He shows how, by
restoring and re-wilding our damaged ecosystems
on land and at sea, we can bring wonder back into
our lives. Monbiot, one of the world’s most
celebrated radical thinkers, follows his own hunger
for new environmental experiences, in a tale of
possibility and travel with wildlife and wild people.
The Book of WoE
Gary Greenberg
Scribe. PB. $32.95
Since its first edition in 1952, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders has been
regarded as the leading
authority on mental-health
diagnosis and research. By
examining the history of the
DSM and the controversies over its latest
revisions – revealing the deeply flawed process
by which mental disorders are invented and
uninvented – Gary Greenberg challenges the
status quo of modern psychiatric practice. He
shows how difficult it is to rigorously differentiate
mental illness from everyday suffering, shedding
light on how the politics behind mental-health
classification has caused diagnosis rates of
autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
and bipolar disorder to skyrocket.
Trouble in Mind
Jenni Ogden
Scribe. PB. $32.95
Neuropsychologist Jenni Ogden,
author of Fractured Minds,
transports the reader into the
worlds of 15 of her most
memorable neurological patients.
There is Luke, the gang member
who loses his speech but finds he
can still sing, and HM, who by losing his memory
becomes the most studied single case in medical
history. You will meet Julian, who misplaces his
internal map of the human body, unable to locate
his ears or hands, and Sophie, who has just
enough time to put her house in order before
Alzheimer’s dementia steals her insight.
A Little History of
Science
William Bynum
Yale. PB. $24.95
People have always been doing
science because they have
always wanted to make sense of
the world and harness its power.
Presenting surprising and
personal stories of scientists
both famous and unsung, A
Little History of Science traces the march of
science through the centuries. From the evolution
of chemistry’s periodic table to the scientific
quest that revealed the DNA molecule, this book
opens a window on the exciting and
unpredictable nature of scientific activity and
describes the uproar that may ensue when
scientific findings challenge established ideas.
A volume for both young and old.
Phyllis Richardson
T&H. HB. $39.95
Living Modern is an
excellent compendium of
styles and ideas. One of the
most popular of recent
interior design books, the
approach is contemporary
liveability – ranging from elegance and
simplicity to the more artful and playful – and
international in scope. It includes a
comprehensive resources index, and is now
available in a compact edition.
Adolf WÖlfli: Creator
of the Universe
Terezie Zemánková
Arbor Vitae. HB. $92
The Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli
(1864–1930) was a lifelong
outsider, an orphan, a rascal
and a labourer who, during
his 30 years’ internment in an
insane asylum, transformed
the misery in his life into a gigantic synthetic
work, amounting to 25 000 pages of text,
drawings, collages, and musical and numerical
records. Today he is considered as the most
important art brut artist and the creator of some
of the most remarkable works of the twentieth
century. This beautiful monograph covers his
entire artistic and literary oeuvre.
Stripes
Linda O’Keefe
T&H. HB. Was $59.95
This intriguing and original
interiors book focuses on
the simplest and most
ancient of all decorative
markings: stripes. The
diverse contents range from
chic contemporary apartments, historic
mansions and industrial spaces to Buddhist
temples and African vernacular dwellings. You
will also find art, fashion, design and
photography, all divided into chapters such as
Jovial, Paradoxical, Vertical and Horizontal, and
with more than 250 colour images.
Sydney Moderns
Deborah Edwards et al
AGNSW. PB. $65
This important new book
looks at one of the most
distinctive periods in the
history of Australian art,
bracketed by the two world
wars, from 1915 into the
1940s. The Sydney moderns
were progressive artists at the forefront of the
development of modernism in Australia. They
produced exuberant, cosmopolitan paintings,
prints, sculptures, designs and applied arts in
response to, and as part of, the changing modern
world and the modernist movement at large.
Artists include Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, Dorrit
Black, Harold Cazneaux, Grace Cossington
Smith, Olive Cotton, Roy de Maistre, Max Dupain,
Adrian Feint, Rah Fizelle, Frank Hinder, Margel
Hinder, Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor and
Roland Wakelin, among many others.
with Christine Gordon from
Readings Carlton
Ross Dobson
A&U. PB. $34.99
Ross Dobson’s love affair with
all things foodie began at an
early age, under the influence
of neighbours from Hong Kong
and Italy. There are tastes from
these regions, as well as many
others, in his new collection, a globetrotting
ode to all things vegetable. Ross turns the
traditional snags around the barbie into a
celebration of earthy goodness. This cookbook
could change all those family gatherings into
something new, fresh and healthy. Silverbeet
and feta gozleme, anyone?
James Joyce wrote with a red crayon.
Gertrude Stein preferred to write in a
parked car. Vladimir Nabokov liked to work
standing up in his favourite socks.
Odd Type Writers reveals the unusual
techniques and eccentric routines of fifty
great writers, covering all aspects
of the writing process.
One: A Cook and her
Cupboard
Florence Knight
Saltyard Books. HB. $49.99
This is a terrific and original idea for
a cookbook: recipes based on
Knight’s top ten cupboard
ingredients – flour, olive oil, salt,
etc. Knight is a chef well on the
way to complete stardom. At only
27 years old, she has been the
head chef at London’s Venetian restaurant Polpetto
and is about to open her own little place. She cooks,
she said in a recent interview, because her mum
couldn’t cook to save her life. I’m sure Mum could,
following these recipes: they’re simple and delicious.
Try her olive oil poached cod – truly lush and easy
cooking. This is a book for everyone from the
home to the restaurant. Brilliant.
According to his tyrannical teacher,
11-year-old Andy Flegg is a reluctant writer.
So now if he wants to get the Xbox that
his parents have promised him, he has to
write in a journal every day until his next
birthday! This is a hilarious book about a
boy coping with puberty, family break-ups,
friends, enemies and girls.
Istanbul
Rebecca Seal
Hardie Grant. HB. $45
I’m fortunate enough to have a
very close Turkish friend who is a
terrific chef, and so is her mother.
I thought I knew all about
eggplant stuffed with lamb, vine
leaves rolled, sweet desserts
dipped in honey and nuts, but
no, apparently I’m missing so much. As the
authors travel through this exotic, colourful city
they are introduced, and in turn, we are, to one of
the most varied cuisines in the world. This book
captures the kitchens full of anchovies or rice or
garlic and the wonderful people farming and
fishing to provide fresh produce. This is a travel
book as well as a cookbook. Leave it out on your
coffee table; it’ll bring in the warmth from far away.
Few Australian writers have delved
as deeply as Peter Goldsworthy into the
mysterious state of being that is childhood.
In this memoir he applies his fascination
with that state to his own boyhood,
from his bizarre first memories
to the embarrassments of adolescence.
A beautiful homage to childhood
in general.
James Halliday Wine
Companion, 2014
James Halliday
Hardie Grant. PB. Was $39.95
Special price, limited time only, $29.95
Mr Halliday has been
producing this particular
bible for years. You may already
have a copy, but the date may
be from the year 2000, or bless,
even 2010. If there is one
element of wine tasting that
James Halliday has taught me, it is this: wine
changes. So the bible you have been using
since 1998 is now no longer relevant. The wines
have changed. The wineries are making different
wine. The reds that are drinking well are not the
same reds from 2013. James Halliday Wine
Companion provides important detailed notes to
make your life easier when choosing wine for
every day. Keep up to date – it’s worth it.
One day, Noah Dreary complained
so much that his head fell off. It’s an
expression we’ve all heard many times,
but award-winning author and illustrator
Aaron Blabey takes it to another extreme
in this hilarious story about a boy who
discovers the very real consequences
of his continual complaining.
penguin.com.au
13
14
A Cook, A Caravan, A Canoe
Picture Books
SJ Finn on the real and mythical, the bizarre and banal in
Wayne Macauley’s writing
I buy Australian literary magazines as often as I can. This is because I love reading them. And
because there is that small issue of those magazines needing all the monetary support they
can get: a testimony, perhaps, to the difficulty of knowing what true value is in a modern world.
Over and above general pleasure, there are occasions when my appreciation soars.
The publication of Wayne Macauley’s short story ‘Keilor Cranium’ in Meanjin late last year was
one such instance, and I remembered why I have been drawn to this writer over the years. Like
one critic from The Bulletin wrote of Macauley’s first novel, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe:
‘[L]ike falling into a bale of barbed wire in the dark and fighting to get out till morning. The
more I struggled, the more it got under my skin.’
The reader consuming ‘Keilor Cranium’ could be forgiven for thinking that the piece
is non-fiction, certainly at first anyway. It starts with a fact about the actual discovery of an
Aboriginal skull by a man called James White in 1940 near the
Maribyrnong River. Slowly, however, the story, which is about the
quest to find a missing piece of the artefact, becomes a tale about
suburban endeavour – an endeavour both serious and curious,
straightforward and paradoxical; a story that brings up questions
about our modern lives.
Traversing the ordinary and drawing out the peculiar is the
hallmark of Macauley’s three novels. From the housing estate in
Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe – so ubiquitous in Australia
and never more so than in the sprawling city of Melbourne – to
the domestic community in Caravan Story, Macauley travels
the landscape of the common experience with almost sublime
casualness. All of this is interlaced with an ascending incongruity that can sometimes stretch to
the bizarre, and his ability to suspend the reader there in that strange but familiar world creates
a wonderful Orwellian reality.
Macauley’s latest novel, The Cook, is no exception. Here, a young man, Zac, joins a
program that is designed to teach the disenfranchised to become chefs. We discover the concerns
and affectations of our narrator, and, while we might assume that Zac has every reason to be
angry, he behaves in an exemplary, if not somewhat mechanical, manner. Zac is courteous and
hardworking, not to mention devoted to his superiors. These unexpected sentiments make him
both compelling and uncertain, as we find Zac to be a compendium of sincerity:
There is a knife for everything not like at home where one will do we have to learn
about them all. Also the pots I have never seen so many pots. And frying pans. Fabian made a
pasta bang bang bang you should see how fast he goes! When he finished he handed it around
we each had a taste it was nice but a bit spicy for me. Some of the kids held their forks with a
fist you could see Fabian’s face but he didn’t say anything because it’s early days and we’re still
learning those kids will get it eventually.
Macauley sets the tone of the everyday by his use of language. The Cook is completely
devoid of commas, and the rolling sentences work to both relax and alert the reader. They put us
at the centre of something which might best be described as a little odd. We know things about
the protagonist: his low socio-economic background, his lack of formal education, his energetic,
bright and personable traits, but we’re never quite sure we understand him. Our feet might be on
the ground but they may also be disconcertingly inserted in it.
Stylistically, Macauley has been compared to Robert Walser, the German-speaking
Swiss writer (and indeed Walser’s 1909 modernist novel, Jakob von Gunten, provides the
epigraph for The Cook). Comparisons between the two books make sense. In Jakob von
Gunten, Walser’s long, laconic sentences show the reader how
astutely amenable Jakob is, while depicting the protagonist
and his place in the world with disquieting precision. The novel
begins: ‘One learns very little here, there is a shortage of teachers,
and none of us boys of the Benjamenta Institute will come to
anything, that is to say, we will all be something very small and
insubordinate later in life.’
Where the two writers diverge is in the dark force that
Macauley sculpts out of his benign dioramas. The Cook, for
example, tracks the meticulous care Zac takes as he prepares
live animals for the cooking class by feeding them flavoursome
foods. The details of their slaughter are then presented with
cold exactness. Later in the book, a local butcher continues
his personable service to wealthy housewives despite their failure to pay him, resulting in a
growing amount of credit. This interlacing of care and destruction occurs to great effect in The
Cook. The wholesome and diabolical are held in the same hand and, like every good fable, this
sense of foreboding lingers on.
Uncomfortably recognisable, Macauley’s stories remind us of the predicaments
our communities face, whether we are talking about those who settle in the vast suburbs we
construct (Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe) or those who live as artists (Caravan Story)
or the marginalised (The Cook). The easy language and familiar scenes lead us along a
path where the bizarre becomes purposeful, and where the rhythm, both new and offbeat,
reverberates long after the covers have been closed.
By SJ Finn
SJ Finn’s novel This Too Shall Pass is published by Sleepers.
She can be found at www.sjfinn.com.
Peck Peck Peck
Lucy Cousins
Walker. HB. $24.95
Did you
know...
... in the original
proposal for
Nancy Drew,
the intrepid girl
detective, it was
suggested that
her name be
Stella Strong,
Nell Cody, Helen
Hale or Diana
Dare.
Review: Peck Peck Peck is fun, fun, fun
and well timed for Father’s Day. Daddy
woodpecker teaches his baby bird how to
peck, and from then on she pretty much
practices on everything she encounters. She
finds a house, and as she approaches each
room and its objects, guess what she does? Little children will
love the repetition of the word ‘peck’, but it’s also a fun and
colourful introduction to everyday things. As the pages get
more holey, little woodpecker gets weary and her loving,
encouraging dad finally snuggles her into her nest. For ages
12 months and up.
Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn
bang
Leo Timmers
Gecko. PB. $15.99
From the author-illustrator of The Magical Life
Of Mr Renny, this almost-wordless picture
book is filled with bright colours, quirky
details, car prangs and animal mix-ups!
Guaranteed to make preschoolers giggle.
Junior Fiction
Don’t Look Now: Book 1
Paul Jennings & Andrew Weldon
A&U. PB. Was $12.99
Special price $9.99
Review: Young readers will enjoy this new,
light-hearted series from celebrated Australian
author Paul Jennings. With two in each book,
these short and amusing stories, illustrated by
Andrew Weldon, are a good choice for children
who are ready for their next challenge after
mastering early readers.
In the first story, Ricky discovers that he shares a
very special talent with his dad, but unfortunately he can’t tell
anyone about it. That doesn’t stop him using his special skill
to pursue adventure and to try to do good deeds. Things don’t
always turn out as Ricky hopes, but for the reader the journey
is easy and lots of fun. Recommended for girls and boys aged
6 to 9 years.
Kate Campbell is from Readings Hawthorn
Middle Fiction
How To Be Invisible
Tim Lott
Walker. PB. $16.95
Review: Strato Nyman, a young boy from
an eccentric English family, has no friends,
he’s being bullied and his parents seem to be
on the brink of splitting up. In this strange and
very readable story, Strato uses science to
explain the universe and his place in it, treating
us to explanations of dark matter, particle
physics and something he calls the ‘Mystery
of the Magic Atom’. When he finds a mysterious book in a
second-hand bookshop with instructions on how to become
invisible, Strato decides to follow his bully and his parents,
leading him to some unexpected discoveries about the
people in his life.
With a smart, likeable protagonist, slightly
reminiscent of the boy in The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-time, this book is an odd juxtaposition of science
and mysticism that doesn’t fully make sense, but provides
some interesting diversions along the way. Recommended for
curious readers aged 11 and up.
Emily Gale is from Readings Carlton
15
Book of the Month
Silver Buttons
Bob Graham
Walker. HB. $27.95
Review: A new Bob Graham picture book is always a delightful addition to children’s
publishing. His gentle stories celebrate family and home and embrace the wider community
and multiculturalism. Silver Buttons is no exception.
We have Jonathan at 9.59am on a Thursday morning ready to take his first step: his small, safe world
about to become a little bit bigger. As he teeters and wobbles, in the space of a minute we see what’s
happening around his neighbourhood. Babies are being born, bread is being bought, people are playing,
and people are farewelled. While his sister Jodie draws the finishing touches to her picture, Jonathan puts
all his effort and concentration into reaching her. One small step for mankind…!
There is so much to look at and ponder in this book, from the smallest detail to the marvellous doublepage bird’s-eye views of the suburb and the city. So many different stories that are playing out
concurrently and then back we go to see Jonathan focusing on his little balancing act.
After you’ve spent a while with a Bob Graham book, you feel the world is a more generous and
likeable place. This is a lovely book for the whole family to share.
Alexa Dretzke is from
Readings Hawthorn
The Four Seasons of
Lucy McKenzie
Kirsty Murray
A&U. PB. $14.99
Review: Due to an unfortunate accident,
11-year-old Lucy spends her Christmas holidays
with her ancient ‘Aunty Big’ in a rambling old
bush homestead. Lucy’s sense of isolation and
uncertainty is compounded by Big’s seemingly
gruff exterior and her spooky old house with its
strangely intriguing paintings. But when the
paintings magically come to life, beckoning
Lucy to step inside, her exciting journey back through time
begins. Is she dreaming or is there some magic afoot?
Author Kirsty Murray is adept at portraying landscapes,
both of geography and of the heart. Her beautifully written book
evokes the wonder and majesty of the Australian bush and the
self-discovery of an 11-year-old girl.
Confident, independent readers (ages 9 and up) will
enjoy Lucy’s wonderful adventure. This is also a compelling and
satisfying read-aloud story for the whole family, guaranteed to
stimulate discussion. Highly recommended.
Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern
The Andy Flegg Survival Guide
to Losing your dog, your Dad
and your dignity in 138 Days
Mark Pardoe
Puffin. PB. $16.99
According to his tyrannical teacher, 11-year-old
Andy Flegg is a reluctant writer. So that’s how he
finds himself forced to write in a journal every day
until his next birthday if he wants to get the Xbox
that his parents had already promised him. That’s
a ridiculous number of Xbox-less days! But
somehow this writing thing seems to grow on
Andy and he soon finds himself revealing all too much.
Refuge
Jackie French
HarperCollins. PB. $15.99
The story of a 14-year-old Afghan who spent much
of his life in Pakistan refugee camps before making
the voyage from Indonesia to Australia. As the
boat crashes against the rocks of Christmas
Island, he loses consciousness and awakes to find
himself in the life he has always dreamed of, but
with no memory of how he got there. He becomes
one of a gang of children who have all come to Australia as a
place of hope.
New
Kids’
Books
Extra Time
Morris Gleitzman
Puffin. PB. $16.99
When Matt is discovered impressing the livestock
in an Aussie country town with his remarkable
soccer skills, he’s offered the chance of a lifetime
– a try-out at one of Europe’s biggest soccer clubs.
His younger sister Bridie goes with him as his
manager and tells us their story. This is the funny
and moving story of a sister’s love for her brother,
and how it survives everything fate throws at it.
The Wishbird
Gabrielle Wang
Puffin. PB. $14.99
Oriole’s beloved Wishbird is dying and she must
leave the Forest to save him. But in the City of
Soulless there is danger everywhere. Can Oriole
and Boy save Soulless and the Wishbird, or will
the city’s darkness prove too great even for
magic? By the award-winning author of A Ghost
in My Suitcase.
Non-Fiction
Welcome to My Country
Laklak Burarrwanga & family
A&U. PB. $18.99
Review: The Yolngu people of Bawaka – a
beautiful, remote beach in the East Arnhem
Land region – are said to be the most culturally
intact Indigenous group in Australia. This book,
a collaboration by six Indigenous women and
three non-Indigenous academics, is a very
thoughtful introduction to their lives and history.
The narrative offers the sort of warm personality that
textbooks often lack as we get to know Laklak Burarrwanga and
her family – how they live off the land, their unique dependency
on it, and the continual fight for their culture. The book meanders
between lifestyle, Dreamtime stories and Laklak’s own story, which
I chose to read in one go, returning to the lifestyle and Dreamtime
stories afterwards. With colour photos, artwork and a Yolngu word
list, this is an interesting mix for 12+ readers, or adults like me with
little knowledge of life in an Indigenous community.
Angela Crocombe is from Readings St Kilda
Letters to Klaus
Klaus Flugge
Random House. PB. $19.95
Review: Remember the days when
letters with stamps were posted? The
momentary mystery of what the
contents held, deciphering the
handwriting to identify the sender.
Times have changed and personal mail and letter writing are
almost things of the past, but thankfully we still have books:
‘Letters to Klaus’ pays tribute to both. In 1976, Klaus Flugge
(what a name!) began the publishing company Anderson
Press, which has given us Elmer, I Want My Potty and many
other marvellous kids’ books. Over the years, many illustrators
have sent him letters in colourfully adorned envelopes and
Klaus has displayed more than 200 of them in his office. Letters
to Klaus is a selection of these letters from many award-winning
artists, and their idiosyncratic envelope art and accompanying
stamps are enchanting. It is a charming gem of a book, and
even more importantly, all the proceeds go to the Save the
Children Fund. AD
Get Into Art: Animals
Susie Brooks
Kingfisher. HB. $24.99
Review: Animals are a fantastic subject for
artists, and they provide an excellent springboard
for this handsome art inspiration and activity book.
It includes examples of a variety of styles and
techniques, featuring artists as diverse as Matisse,
Miró, Escher, Degas, Warhol and Alexander
Calder. For each, you are treated to some biographical information
about the artist along with a discussion of their style and an
example of their art that features an animal. Then you are invited to
create your own animal art in their style. Techniques include
collage, painting, paper models, stencilling and making totem
poles. This is both an educational and creative resource for
budding artists aged 7 and up. I loved it! AC
Classic of the Month
Boy: Tales of Childhood
Roald Dahl
Puffin. PB. $16.99
Review: Even though Roald Dahl’s
masterpieces of storytelling were a constant
feature of my childhood, this book (his first
autobiography), along with its follow-up,
Going Solo, has somehow passed me by
until nearly two decades later.
Dahl’s hilarious, terrifying and
sometimes melancholy recollections of
growing up during the 1920s and ’30s depict
a world that has now largely disappeared,
though his anecdotes have lost none of their ability to delight,
shock and amaze. His mastery of language makes his world
your world, as the stories move – at a breakneck pace – between
different snapshots of Dahl’s childhood. They’re often so
unbelievable the book could easily be mistaken for fiction!
Tales of childhood pranks and general misbehaviour
abound, often ending with the retribution of some truly horrible
teachers. There are also wonderfully poetic descriptions of his
family holidays to Norway, where in Dahl’s mind time gently
slowed to a halt. Fans of Dahl’s gruesome side will be thrilled
with his descriptions of almost losing his nose in a car crash,
before having it reattached by the doctor, and being operated on
without anaesthetic to remove adenoids. Definitely a book for all
ages, no matter when you should have read it.
Chris Rainier is from Readings Hawthorn
16
Beyond
Religion:
Ethics for a
Whole World
Women of Our
Time
The Dalai Lama
PB. Was $23.95
NOW $12
In this concise book packed with ideas, the Dalai
Lama continues his case for a universal ethics
rooted in compassion. He argues that religion
with its diversity can never provide an ethics for
everyone in today’s interconnected global society.
Rather, focusing on tolerance and understanding
between religions, as well as tolerance and
understanding between believers (of any faith)
and non-believers, is the way forward. The way
to achieve such an approach, he proposes, is
through a system of secular ethics grounded in a
deep appreciation of our common humanity.
The Meditation
Handbook
David Fontana &
Michael West
PB. Was $34.95
NOW $12
Meditation balances
psychological well being and physical health
to promote inner peace. This book has a
comprehensive overview of both the modern and
traditional techniques used to arrive at this state
of personal harmony. This guide covers it all:
relaxation and dealing with daily stress; attaining
greater concentration and awareness; achieving
self-discovery and self-acceptance; and spiritual
development.
Babel No More
Michael Erard
Frederick S. Voss
Nigel Slater
HB. Was $59.95
HB. Was $49.99
NOW $24.95
NOW $29.95
Women of Our Time is a glorious photographic
celebration of 75 of the most creative,
controversial, witty, brave, beautiful and
inspirational women of the twentieth century.
These revealing portraits, by an array of
distinguished photographers, form a magnificent
tribute to women who have helped to define the
modern age.
NOW $16.95
A fascinating exploration of
linguistic superlearners whose
abilities shed light on the intellectual potential
in us all. Part scientific detective story, part
travelogue, part valentine to anyone who’s ever
hoped to speak something other than a mother
tongue, this book takes us all over the world to
look at language learning in an entirely new way.
HB. Was $49.95
Throughout history, maps have shaped our
view of the world, and our place in it. In this
scintillating book, Jerry Brotton
argues that far from being
purely scientific objects,
maps of the world are
unavoidably partial
and subjective,
intimately bound up
with the systems of
power, authority and
creativity of particular
times and places.
NW
HB. Was $30
Five identical blocks make up
the Caldwell housing estate
in North West London. If you grew up in this
relic of seventies urban design, the plan was to
get out and get on. Thirty years later, Caldwell
kids Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan have all
moved on, with varying degrees of success.
Living only streets apart, they occupy separate
worlds, and navigate an atomised city in which
few care to be their neighbour’s keeper.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Susan Cain
PB. Was $30
PB. Was $30
NOW $12
NOW $13.95
At least one-third of the
people we know are introverts.
They are the ones who
prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and
create but dislike self-promotion; who favour
working on their own over working in teams. In
Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically
undervalue introverts and shows how much
we lose in doing so. Quiet has the power to
permanently change how we see introverts and,
equally important, how they see themselves.
THe rHS
Encyclopaedia
of Garden
Design
Chris Young
Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
the bestselling author of
The Black Swan and one of
the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals
how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as
human bones get stronger when subjected
to stress and tension, and rumours or riots
intensify when someone tries to repress
them, many things in life benefit from stress,
disorder, volatility and turmoil. What Taleb
has identified and calls ‘antifragile’ is that
category of things that not only gain from
chaos but need it in order to survive and
flourish.
Dear Life
Alice Munro
HB. Was $39.95
HB. WAS $59.95
NOW $19.95
NOW $16.95
Showing you how to create the garden you’ve
always wanted, this book lets you visualise your
ideas, choose a style, develop plans, plot, build,
landscape, select the right plants, and apply
the finishing touches to make your garden a
reflection of your tastes and creativity.
Munro recently said that she
has stopped writing forever;
if so, this her last collection.
If you haven’t read Munro’s marvellous short
stories before, do and do yourself a very big
favour. They are exquisite.
HB. Was $265
NOW $59.95
Even in this digital age, we all love a good
atlas. Combining state-of-the-art cartographic
technology and information, with diverse
physiographic and cultural content, this atlas is
the most accurate and interesting record of the
world yet. Great for Father’s Day!
The Magic of
Reality
Richard Dawkins
HB. Was $59.95
PB. Was $34.95
NOW $16.95
NOW $13
He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most
widely read authors of the twentieth century,
and at one time the most famous writer
in the world, yet W. Somerset
Maugham’s own true story
has never been fully told.
Award-winning writer
Selina Hastings is the
first biographer with
permission to quote
from Maugham’s
private papers, and
from observations
by his daughter,
Liza, concerning the
disastrous court case
instigated by his lover,
Alan Searle.
Bargain
Table
Zadie
Smith
National Geographic
Selina Hastings
Readings
Antifragile
Quiet
The Secret
Lives of
Somerset
Maugham
Jerry Brotton
NOW $12
HB. Was $44
With over 300 recipes, many
from his TV series, Simple Suppers, The Kitchen
Diaries II is full of classic Slater ideas, from a
cider loaf, to an indulgent chicken-and-leek pie
or a simple, fresh salad of pears and
bitter leaves.
A History of
the World in
Twelve Maps
NOW $15.95
National
Geographic
Atlas of the
World
The Kitchen
Diaries II
The Hanging
Garden
Patrick White
With illustrations by Dave
McKean, this book provides fascinating answers
to questions on space, time, evolution and more.
Telling the real story of the world around us,
this enthralling journey through scientific reality
reveals beauty and magic that far exceed any
myth or legend. This is the first book by Dawkins
for a young adult audience, and is a great way to
engage interest in the natural world.
Gallop! the
Game
Rufus Butler Seder
HB. Was $39.95
NOW $16.95
Which animal will win the race? Open the magical
Scanimation door to see which animal will move
on each round. You’ll be strutting, galloping and
fluttering along as you race around the track.
Guess correctly to win. Includes Game Board,
Dice, Animal Movers and Guess Tokens.
LEGO: The LEGO
Book
HB. Was $29.95
NOW $12.95
Two children are brought to
a wild garden on the shores
of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second
World War. The boy’s mother has died in the
Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney
woman and a Communist executed in a Greek
prison. In wartime Australia, these two children
form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate
the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on
the far side of the world.
Daniel Lipkowitz
PB. Was $40
NOW $15
From manufacturing wooden toys to blockbuster
video games, go behind the scenes and discover
fascinating facts and trivia about LEGO, one of
the world’s best-loved companies. A timeline
highlights key moments in LEGO history.
LEGO: The LEGO
Ideas Book
The Lost Girls
of Rome
Daniel Lipkowitz
Donato Carrisi
HB. Was $39.95
NOW $15
PB. Was $29.95
NOW $12
A young girl has mysteriously
disappeared in Rome. As rain
lashes the ancient streets, two men, Clemente
and Marcus, sit in a cafe near the Piazza Navona
and pore over the details of the case. They are
members of the ancient Penitenzeri – a unique
Italian team, linked to the Vatican, and trained in
the detection of true evil.
The LEGO Ideas Book is packed full of tips
from expert LEGO builders on how to make
jet planes reach new heights, create fantastic
fortresses, swing through lush jungles, have
fun on the farm and send space shuttles out of
this world!
Alice’s
Adventures in
Wonderland
Postcards
from Vogue
Lewis Carroll & Robert
Ingpen (illus.)
Vogue
HB. Was $26.95
PB. Was $30
NOW $10
A collection of 100 postcards,
each featuring a striking Vogue cover. From
early aspirational illustrations to modern
celebrity photography, this is a stunning
selection of Vogue’s most dazzling images.
NOW $13.95
This new edition of Carroll’s classic tale
brings together the unabridged text with more
than 70 stunning illustrations by renowned
children’s artist Ingpen, each reflecting
the artist’s unique style and extraordinary
imagination. Also available is the Ingpen
illustrated Treasure Island at $13.95.
New books are regularly added to our website – visit the bargains page at www.readings.com.au for more.
DVD
of
the
month
The Host
$39.95
When an unseen enemy
threatens mankind by taking over
their bodies and erasing their
memories, Melanie (Saoirse
Ronan) will risk everything to
protect the people she cares
most about, proving that love can
conquer all in a dangerous new world. The Host is
based on the bestselling novel by Stephenie Meyer
(author of the Twilight series) and also stars Diane
Kruger and William Hurt.
PORTLANDIA: SEASON 2
$29.95
Released 7 August
Welcome back to the absurd
and embarrassingly familiar
world of Portlandia. Starring in
the second season of this
cult-hit show, Fred Armisen and
Carrie Brownstein continue their
comedic assault on hipster
culture with all new sketches. Old favourites
make appearances as well as a host of new
characters: an intoxicating mixologist, a couple
obsessed with Battlestar Galactica, an artisanal
knot maker and a line for Portland’s most popular
brunch restaurant that becomes so long it
descends into madness. Guest stars include Tim
Robbins, Kristen Wiig and Jeff Goldblum.
Warm Bodies
$39.95
Released 14 August
A funny new twist on a classic
love story, Warm Bodies is a
touching tale about the power of
human connection. Following a
zombie epidemic, R (a highly
unusual zombie) encounters Julie
(a human survivor) and rescues
her from a zombie attack. Julie recognises that R is
different from the other zombies, and as the two
form a special relationship in their struggle for
survival, R becomes increasingly more human,
setting off an exciting, romantic and often comical
chain of events that begin to transform the other
zombies and maybe even the lifeless world they
inhabit. Warm Bodies’ cast includes Nicholas Hoult,
Teresa Palmer and Rob Corddry.
ON THE BEACH:
Shot in and around Melbourne of the 1950s, On
the Beach is adapted from British–Australian author
Nevil Shute’s classic anti-war novel.
with Lou Fulco
INSPECTOR SONERI:
FOG AND CRIMES 2
$44.95
Released 7 August
In northern Italy, life can be
murky, foggy and dank – and
so can the crimes. Detective
Soneri is a grizzled, battleweary cop in the tradition of
Wallander and Columbo.
Based in Ferarra, he’s clearly
attempting to start afresh after hard times. He’s
precise, he’s measured, and he never seems to
light that damned cigar! Excellent detective
stories that are very true to their place in Italy.
OBLIVION
$39.95
Released 8 August
Set in an unrecognisable future,
this sci-fi adventure sees Tom
Cruise playing a veteran drone
repairmen assigned to extract
Earth’s remaining resources.
While carrying out this
operation on an evacuated,
war-ravaged Earth, he discovers a crashed
spacecraft with contents that force him to
question what he knows about the war, his
mission and himself.
ITALY UNPACKED
$29.95
Released 7 August
After Sicily Unpacked, art
historian Andrew GrahamDixon and chef Giorgio
Locatelli continue north on
their cultural adventure,
teaming up again to unpack
the art, culture, food and
landscape of northern Italy. The pair visits
major cities and regions like Milan, Bologna
and Lombardy, but also smaller gems like
Mantua, Ferrara, Modena and Cremona, in
FALLOUT:
The companion documentary to On the Beach,
Fallout explores the background behind
the book described as the most important
Australian novel ever.
search of goods that are known worldwide:
from Parmesan and Parma ham, to Ferrari
and Fiat. Giorgio also has a more personal
reason: he was brought up in Lombardy, so
this Italy is his Italy!
Rust And Bone
$39.95
THE LAYOVER: SEASON 1
Released 7 August
$29.95
Based on a book of short stories by Canadian
author Craig Davidson, Rust and Bone tells the
story of Alain, a struggling single father who
goes to stay with his sister. It is there he meets
Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), a whale trainer at a
marine park. After she suffers a terrible accident
that leaves her confined to a wheelchair, an
unusual relationship develops between the two.
Both marginalised and coping with their own
inner demons, the two form a strange yet rare
bond in this deeply dramatic French film, which
was selected as part of Official Competition at
the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Released 14 August
Anthony Bourdain is a seasoned
traveller who’s hit up all corners
of the globe many times over.
More often than not, he has time
to kill in some of the world’s
biggest airport hubs. Instead of
sitting at the airport hotel, he
sets out to explore each city in the short amount
of time he has there. In this new series, Tony is
high octane, gritty, caffeinated and travelling with
a sense of urgency. Why? Because he has only
24–48 hours to unleash an unpredictable story
about a place, a people and their food. Tony will
travel through the US, Asia and Europe and
reveal insider tips that only the most seasoned
traveller would know.
Performance
$39.95
Performance is a captivating
meditation on ageing,
creativity, sacrifice and artistic
dedication, anchored by
superb performances and a
stirring classical score. Set in
contemporary Manhattan,
Performance tells the story of four musicians,
bound together by their passion for music and
a long, faithful collaboration. As they mark their
twenty-fifth anniversary, their dignified patriarch
and cellist, Peter (Christopher Walken), is
diagnosed with a chronic illness, throwing the
future of the group into question. His attempt to
find a replacement player and organise
rehearsals for their upcoming concert brings up
unresolved issues and grievances. Also stars
Philip Seymour-Hoffman and Catherine Keener.
THE WEIGHT OF ELEPHANTS:
A captivatingly poetic film, inspired by Sonya
Hartnett’s novel Of a Boy.
MONROE: SEASON 2
$29.95
Released 7 August
Eighteen months on from the first
season, and his divorce, Gabriel
Monroe (James Nesbitt) is still the
wise-cracking, irreverent and
brilliant neurosurgeon he always
was. Series 2 of ITV’s acclaimed
medical drama sees Monroe face
a number of changes he could really do without.
SHANE DELIA’S
SPICE JOURNEY
$29.95
Released 7 August
Taking us on a culinary
pilgrimage to explore his
heritage, Shane Delia discovers
Middle Eastern food traditions
that date back thousands of
years … and then reinvents
them for the twenty-first century
from his home in Melbourne.
THE PATIENCE STONE:
Adapted from writer-director Atiq Rahimi’s
award-winning novel of the same name, The
Patience Stone is “a mesmerizing, modern take
on the tales of Scherazade.” – Variety
YOUR FAVOURITE BOOKS ON FILM
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT MIFF.COM.AU
SELFISH GIANT:
A powerful and tragic reinvention of the
eponymous Oscar Wilde fable.
MOON MAN:
An enchantingly quirky animation adapted
from Tomi Ungerer’s 1967 bestselling children’s
picture book.
17
M I F F. C O M . AU
18
cd
of the
month
Dear Departure
Sweet Jean
$19.95
Review: This is the debut album release for
Melbourne-based duo Sweet Jean, comprised
of Sime Nugent and Alice Keath. Performed by
two distinct voices that combine to create
beautiful, melodic songs with razor-sharp
harmonies, Dear Departure is a heartfelt and
well-realised collection of raw, contemporary
folk songs (including their much-liked single
‘Shiver and Shake’). I would highly
recommend for fans of artists such as Fleet
Foxes, She & Him and Karen Dalton.
Miranda La Fleur is from Readings St Kilda
Country
My Favourite
Picture of You
additional credit to Rick Rubin. The press for
this release is unfortunately more about the
status of the band being on an ‘extended
break’ more so than the music: during a
hectic work and touring schedule, Joy
Williams and John Paul White parted ways. A
field day ensued and rumours circulated
regarding an end to the partnership.
Nevertheless nearly a year passes, Williams
and White are still not speaking, but lo and
behold, a new album appears. According to
Williams, ‘This album chronicles loss and
regret and anger and victory and sweetness
and loyalty and I hope that people get the
chance to listen to it.’ They are a wonderful
duo who write great music and sing
wonderfully together, and if this is indeed the
end of the road, then they have left us with
two great memories of their partnership.
Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn
Pop/Rock
The Hurting Scene
Melody Pool
Was $26.95
Review: It’s nice to hear
a strong, rustic country
record, and The Hurting
Scene, the debut from
Hunter Valley native Melody
Pool, is one such album. The album was
recorded in Nashville, and co-produced by
Brad Jones (Josh Rouse and Justin Townes
Earle) and Jace Everett. With a maturity in
Pool’s lyrics and playing that belies her youth,
this is an impressive debut which sits well
with contempories such as Patty Griffin, Eliza
Gilkyson and Kathleen Edwards.
Michael Awosoga-Samuel is from Readings
Carlton
Pushin’ Against a Stone
Southeastern
Jason Isbell
$24.95
Review: Southeastern is
the latest release from
former Drive-By Trucker
Jason Isbell. This fantastic
record is by far Isbell’s most
personal to date, and its themes are clearly
very much inspired by some battled demons
and dramatic lifestyle changes. The record is
musically very strong, but it’s the lyrics that
really stick. Tracks such as ‘Elephant’ and
‘Cover Me Up’ are deeply touching and reveal
a layer to Isbell’s songwriting previously
unheard. He is most definitely developing a
reputation as a very talented songwriter.
Declan Murphy is from Readings St Kilda
Conversations
with Ghosts
Paul Kelly, James Ledger, Genevieve
Lacey and the ANAM Orchestra
$24.95
Valerie June
Released 9 August
$24.95
Commissioned by ANAM
(Australian National
Academy of Music), these
pieces were co-written by
Paul Kelly and James
Ledger, based on poems by Les Murray, W.B.
Yeats, Judith Wright, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
and others, as well as some new lyrics from
Kelly. Together they have created a rich and
atmospheric 12-track work that touches on
the theme of death and mortality. The
beautifully warm recording was captured live
at Elisabeth Murdoch Hall in Melbourne
during a performance in October 2012.
Released 20 August
The set flows like a river, or perhaps like a
person wandering from room to room in a
gallery. Themes include the classical and
contemporary ECM New Series, music for and
from films, trans-cultural music, ambient
minimalism, and jazz and improvisation.
There are extensive sections of Andrey
Dergatchev’s beautiful score to The Return,
leading into Nils Petter Molvaer’s hypnotic,
electronically manipulated trumpet, and
swathes of Eleni Karaindrou’s magnificent film
music. There is an extraordinary disc of the
label’s New Series covering Reich, Pärt,
Tavener and more. And there are a couple of
the most imaginatively sequenced discs of
‘jazz’ you will ever hear. The packaging is
handsome, sturdy and utterly minimal: the
music talks for itself.
Richard Mohr is from Readings Carlton
Wisława
Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet
$39.95. 2CDs
Review: Wisława is both
the unveiling of the Polish
trumpet legend’s new
band–drummer Gerald
Cleaver, bassist Thomas
Morgan, and brilliant young Cuban pianist
David Virelles – and a huge creative output
(eleven new Stanko originals, the title track
bookending the album in radically different
versions) inspired by the polish poet Wisława
Szymborska, who died in 2012. Lyricism
redolent of Stanko’s albums with the Marcin
Wasilewski trio – albeit with a more muscular
rhythm section – is punctuated with harder
modal bop (‘Assassins’, ‘Faces’) and
electrifying shards of atonality (‘Mikrokosmos’),
but ultimately it rests on Stanko’s balladplaying, which remains without peer. RM
Sun, Cloud
Luke Howard
$19.95
Review: Melbourne jazz
pianist Luke Howard has
delivered an astonishing
and beautiful work
incorporating solo piano,
electronic washes, guitar, lap steel bass, and
other percussion and orchestral elements.
Recorded across Melbourne, Oslo and
Reykjavik, this is 45 minutes of some of the
most moving sounds I’ve heard all year. Call it
ambient classical, perhaps, but this is wholly
engaging with its ebb and flow between
melancholic solo piano and the rich deep
sounds of violin and cello.
Review: Valerie June is
no flash in the pan, born and
raised in Tennessee on a diet
of gospel, soul and country.
June has already released
three independent records, collaborating with
artists like Old Crow Medicine Show and
Meshell Ndegeocello before releasing this first
major studio album with the assistance of Dan
Auerbach of The Black Keys (who co-wrote
three tracks). Booker T. Jones plays on
‘Somebody to Love’, and part of the album was
recorded in Budapest with producer Peter
Sabak. Pushin’ Against a Stone is an authentic
blues record with a modern sound. MAS
Jazz
Gift
The Civil Wars
Selected Signs III-VIII
The Civil Wars
ECM
Was $26.95
$84.95. 6CDs
Review: Selected Signs
III–VIII (I and II are longdeleted single discs) is the
first comprehensive
anthology from Germanbased record label ECM (over seven hours).
Really it’s the soundtrack to the Munich
exhibition ECM – A Cultural Archaeology.
Review: A work based
on the poems of Emily
Dickinson and Emily Brontë
sounds like a pretentious
affair, but in singer/composer
Susanne Abbuehl’s hands, and those of her
small but sympathetic band, you will go to
some strange places indeed. The album
has lots of space, allowing your mind to
wander wherever the soloing flugelhorn,
piano and incredibly well-recorded acoustic
percussion go. PB
Released 5 August
Review: The Civil Wars
self-titled sophomore
release is the highly
anticipated follow-up to
2011’s Barton Hollow.
Charlie Peacock again produces, with
Paul Barr is from Readings Carlton
Susanne Abbuehl
$24.95
Guy Clark
$24.95
Review: Still going
strong in his seventy-first
year, Texan songsmith Guy
Clark returns with his first
full-length record in almost
four years. The gorgeous title track, and
wonderful album cover, references a
photograph of Clark’s beloved late wife
Susanna, taken shortly after she stormed from
their house having discovered Clark and
legendary drinking partner Townes Van Zandt
drunk, again. Elsewhere, on tracks such as
‘Cornmeal Waltz’ and ‘El Coyote’, Clark once
more proves there are few songwriters around
who can match him for sheer warmth and
wisdom. DM
The Old School
Peter Rowan
$24.95
Grammy award-winning legend
Peter Rowan’s latest album
sees him keeping the spirit of
traditional bluegrass well and
truly alive. It features an
astounding array of guests – around 25 musicians
and singers in total – all playing and singing in a
circle, recording old-school style. Given the
pedigree of both Rowan himself (as a former
Bluegrass Boy for Bill Monroe) and his assembled
guests, it’s no wonder the album has such an
authentic feel. Banjo, mandolin, guitar, fiddle and,
of course, beautiful harmonies all give it a warmth
and depth that can only come from a genuine love
of the music.
Folk/World
At Peace
Ballaké Sissoko
$22.95
Review: I have other
recordings by this West
African kora player and his
band, but this one really got
me. Sissoko jams with fellow
band members on some astonishingly virtuosic
displays of kora, acoustic six- and 12-string guitar,
balafon and cello. The title, At Peace, is apt as
several of the slower pieces – with their rolling
rhythms – do invoke feelings of tranquillity. If you
cherished Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté’s
In the Heart of the Moon, this one is coming from
a similar direction. PB
Border-Free
Chucho Valdés & the Afro-Cuban
Messengers
$29.95
Cuba’s most famous jazz
pianist has released a mix of
Afro-Cuban rhythms and
various takes of modern jazz
on this new album. Branford
Marsalis is guest on three tracks with his
warm, romantic saxophone, but it is Valdés’
piano-playing that absolutely shines. The
album is infused with many influences,
including the music of Native Americans and
echoes of Cuban big bands. As a tribute to
Valdés’ broad musical interest, there are
many elements at play on Border-Free, and it
is masterfully rendered.
classical
cd of the
month
Bellini: Norma
Cecilia Bartoli
Decca. 4783517. 2CDs. $48.95
Review: The tragedy of
the priestess Norma is well
known to opera lovers.
Bellini’s eloquent score and
soaring vocal lines bring this
tale of love and loss into sharp focus. This
recording is performed with Cecilia Bartoli, Sumi
Jo and John Osborne in main roles, but the true
kudos needs to go to Maurizio Biondi and
Riccardo Minasi who have created a new, critical
edition of the score. Tempo, dynamics and the
orchestration itself has changed, mostly subtly,
but as a result there are more colours in the
music and consistency in the dramatic style. A
fascinating recording for fans of Bellini and those
with a musicological bent!
Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings
Schubert: Symphony
No. 8 ‘Unfinished’ &
Incidental Music to
Rosamunde: Selections
The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
& Sebastian Lang-Lessing
ABC Classics. 4764740. $24.95
Review: The Tasmanian
Symphony Orchestra record
much for ABC Classics. Being
slighter than the other state
orchestras, they focus on the
smaller but no less important orchestral repertoire
of Mozart, Dohnányi, Mendelssohn and, of course,
Schubert, and I always find their recordings full of
a delicacy and respect. There are many recordings
of Schubert’s famous ‘unfinished’ Symphony No.
8; we have no idea why Schubert failed to
complete it – or indeed whether or not this was as
he wanted it. Does the world need another
recording of this instantly recognisable work?
Maybe not, but this is a delightful rendition that
would suit any collector. KR
Verdi: Rigoletto (DVD)
Michael Mayer
DG. 0734935. $24.95
Review: Whenever a Met
Opera production lands on my
desk, I eagerly rip off the
packaging for immediate viewing.
Always so inventive in their
presentations, they also have the
best singers in the world on stage
– so it looks good, sounds even better and, despite
the small screen at home, is a wonderful
experience. For those who have season tickets to
see it at the cinema here in Australia, you already
know what I’m talking about. But even if you’re not
a big fan, these are experiences – not just opera.
I could wax lyrical about their latest DVD release,
Verdi’s Rigoletto, but I won’t – you’ll just have to
see it for yourself. Don’t miss out! KR
For You: The World’s
Best Loved Classical
Piano Pieces
Alena Cherny
SONY. 88883702842. $19.95
Review: I have a
confession to make:
compilation albums are a
guilty pleasure of mine.
Sometimes all we want are
the familiar to surround us with their wellknown beauty. Alena Cherny is a Ukrainian
pianist living in Switzerland and she performs
as a soloist and chamber musician. This
chamber influence is obvious in her treatment
of these famous works; she has a feeling for
all the different voices within each piece. You
will know all in this repertoire – whether or not
you know their names – and it’s a great
collection of short works, or single movements
from larger works, that will delight first-time
classical listeners or any piano lovers. KR
Stravinsky:
Le Sacre du Printemps
The New York Philharmonic
& Leonard Bernstein
SONY. 88765469152. $24.95
Review: Although
Bernstein passed away more
than 20 years ago, we are still
spellbound by his recordings.
This latest re-release is to
celebrate the centennial anniversary of
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and sees Bernstein at
the helm of the glorious New York Philharmonic.
Remastered, it has the brightness of
contemporary recordings with the raw power of
Bernstein. At times chaotic and at others lyrical,
this work is just one of those you should never be
without. If you don’t already have a recording of
this seminal work, this is the one to start with. KR
Journeys
Emerson String Quartet
with Paul Neubauer & Colin Carr
SONY. 88725470602. $19.95
Review: What an
eloquently named string sextet,
Souvenir of Florence. Written
by one of my favourite
composers, Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky, this is a work unlike any others of his
You can also browse and buy
at our secure website:
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I have heard. Although the themes were sketched
in Florence, there is still an overwhelming sense of
Russian folk tunes, beginning in the overly
romantic style of central Europe and slowly
moving east. And what a performance from the
Emerson String Quartet, with Paul Neubauer and
Colin Carr joining to make the numbers. The
second work on this disc, Transfigured Night by
Schoenberg, is considered his first important
work, composed in 1899. Their rendition is strong,
but it’s in the Tchaikovsky where the Emerson
Quartet’s true musicality seems to lie. KR
The Essential
Julian Bream
Julian Bream
RCA. 88883746962. 2CDs. $14.95
Review: Julian Bream
along with John Williams
and Andrés Segovia have
done a lot to enhance the
popularity of the classical
guitar in the world of classical music. This CD,
released to celebrate his eightieth birthday,
only represents a small portion of the
recorded catalogue of Bream, but it is a good
example of the music that he’s championed
throughout his career. There are performances
of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and
Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra as well
as some of the forgotten Elizabethan gems
he’s restored to circulation. Bream plays
beautifully throughout: if you don’t have any of
his recordings in your collection, then this is a
good place to start. PR
Wagner in Switzerland
The Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
& David Zinman
RCA. SOIP5479412.2. $29.95
When those first glorious
chords of the Overture to the
Flying Dutchman started, with
their big brassy sound and a
warmth I’ve not heard in a
while from Wagner recordings, I was taken
completely by surprise. This album is a terrific
gem to celebrate the 20 years that Wagner
spent living in Switzerland, and although this is
somewhat of an odd idea to celebrate, the
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and David Zinman
show that perhaps Switzerland really was the
spiritual home of Wagner’s music. Their
interpretations have an elasticity and beauty
that was hugely enjoyable. While I would never
call myself a fan of Wagner’s operas, this
recording has turned my head to make me look
closer at his music. KR
19
Solo
Leonard Grigoryan
WWM. WWM017. $24.95
Review: Leonard Grigoryan and his brother
Slava have established a fine reputation as
guitarists and musicians of the highest calibre.
This recording is Leonard’s first where he takes
centre stage. The CD features four pieces
composed by Leonard, with one of the original
compositions paying homage to a musical hero
of his – American guitarist Ralph Towner. He has
recorded Towner’s piece The Reluctant Bride,
while the remainder of the album is music from
South America – compositions by Heitor
Villa-Lobos, Agustin Barrios and Radamés
Gnattali. This is an excellent first-up recording
from Leonard: the playing is exciting, precise and
full of emotion and beauty. Add this to your
collection and you won’t be disappointed.
Phil Richards is from Readings Carlton
Anna Netrebko: Verdi
Anna Netrebko, the Orchestra Teatro
Regio Torino & Gianandrea Noseda
DG. 4791736. CD+DVD. $24.95
One of the most anticipated
classical albums of 2013, this
sumptuous, all-Verdi
programme is Netrebko’s
heartfelt birthday tribute to the
master of Italian grand opera, with selections from
Il Trovatore, Macbeth, I vespri siciliani, Don Carlo
and Giovanna d’arco. This is music of emotion,
power and extraordinary drama – personally
selected and performed by the best-selling
soprano of the twenty-first century.
Archiv Produktion: A
Grand Concert of MusicK
The English Concert
& Trevor Pinnock
DG. 4791406. $9.95
Neatly enveloped, this
package contains an
enchanting CD (complete
with notes) from the halcyon
days of The English Concert
and Trevor Pinnock. A Grand Concert of Music is
a rich, English Baroque program including a
violin ‘concerto’ by Geminiani and a keyboard
concerto by Arne, featuring respectively Simon
Standage and Pinnock himself. A lavish 96-page
Archiv Catalogue (Compactothèque) – nearly
400 items – is also included.
POST TO: PO Box 1066, Carlton, VIC, 3053
FAX TO: (03) 9347 1641
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Readings Monthly, August 2013

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